I did not encounter Phillis Wheatley through formal study or sustained literary instruction.
I encountered her through a short animated lecture — a contemporary inquiry into a disappearance that was not sudden, but structural.
Phillis Wheatley was an 18th-century poet whose work was published while she was still enslaved. Writing in a society that denied her legal personhood, she nonetheless produced poetry that circulated internationally, forcing audiences to confront an authorship they had been taught to believe impossible.
Her poems survived.
Her life, after emancipation, did not.
What followed her early recognition was not triumph, but erasure — a narrowing of opportunity, audience, and record. The conditions that allowed her voice to be heard once did not allow it to be sustained.
This entry exists to mark the moment her voice entered this archive — not through recovery or reinterpretation, but through record. The video below is presented as the point of encounter, preserved as it was received.
The video asks a question rather than offering closure:
Why did Phillis Wheatley disappear?
Phillis Wheatley does not need restoration here.
She does not need elevation.
Her authorship already existed — briefly visible, then constrained.
This page exists only to acknowledge her place — and to ensure her voice remains present among the many women whose stories shaped this world, even when the world refused to hold them.
Record continues:
Poetry Foundation — Phillis Wheatley
Scott Bryant 
You must be logged in to post a comment.