Tag Archive for Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Wesleyan University Press’ Antiracist Reading Lists!

by mkolson • August 18, 2020

To celebrate the continuous struggle for freedom and equality in America, Wesleyan University Press has compiled a few antiracist reading lists in order to amplify BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices, experiences, and histories. Below are just a few of the fantastic titles Wesleyan University Press has published by BIPOC authors or about the Black historical legacy. Poetry, music and dance, autobiography, science fiction, historical novels, and more show the breadth of these lyrical, literary, and scholarly contributions. We are dedicated to supporting Black authors and stories, to listening and learning through publishing and reading. This moment is highlighting just how much work there is to be done in order to dismantle systemic racism in our country; these books help show us why that work is so important and how we can begin to integrate it into our daily lives and reading practices. Black lives matter!

To order books and view our full list of titles, please visit https://www.hfsbooks.com/publishers/wesleyan-university-press/ or click on the below cover images to visit a book page directly. And don’t forget to look out for Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times edited by Christina Baade and Kristin McGee– forthcoming in Spring 2021!

The following list includes poetry, science fiction, historical novels, and non-fiction.

A Hubert Harrison Reader

Five Black Lives

African American Connecticut Explored

100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof

The Little Edges by Fred Moten	The Book of Landings by Mark McMorris	Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip
Un-American by Hafizah Geter	The Lazarus Poems by Kamau Brathwaite	Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa
The Peacock Poems by Sherley Anne Williams	semiautomatic by Evie Shockley	In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae
To See the Earth Before the End of the World by Ed Roberson	Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies Through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha by Ananya Chatterjea	Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy
The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers	Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins	The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas
Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae by Michael E. Veal	Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle by Gina Athena Ulysse	Come home Charley Patton by Ralph Lemon
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose	The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory by Anne Farrow	The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany
How to Dress a Fish by Abigail Chabitnoy	Blue Ravens by Gerald Vizenor	In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo

Juneteenth, celebrating freedom

by sbazarian • June 19, 2020

On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation was read by General Gordon to Texas, the last state to free enslaved people. Known as Juneteenth, this day marks the official end of slavery in the United States.

President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation almost two years before Juneteenth on January 1, 1863. However, at the time it was issued, the proclamation only applied to places under Confederate control, excluding other areas such as border states and rebel areas under Union control. Two years later, all enslaved people were officially freed.

Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday in 1979. Today, it is recognized by many states and celebrated through parades, barbecues, and other outdoor activities.

On this Juneteenth, Wesleyan University Press celebrates old and new publications by black authors exploring the legacy of the black experience in America through poetry, essays, and historical texts. Make sure to check out the below titles to support Black authors on this holiday.

#theageofphillis: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers talks latest book of poetry on Twitter

by gsanford • May 6, 2020

On April 16, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers answered questions, on Twitter, about her new book, The Age of Phillis. Using the hashtag, #theageofphillis, readers tuned in to ask Jeffers about her process, inspiration, and relationship to documentary poetry. Below is a recap of the informative, heartfelt, sometimes humorous Q&A with Honorée.

“Jeffers pulls from historical archives to create more than 150 poems for glimpses of untold eighteenth century history from Wheatley a literary foremother, pioneer of ekphrastic poetics who writes through a diasporic life spanning Africa, Europe, and America. In The Age of Phillis Jeffers sheds imaginative light with poems that bearing witness.”
—Katherine Ellington, writer for World House Medicine

Listen to Ellington reading Wheatley’s poem “Imagination”.

Announcing “The Age of Phillis”

by sbazarian • March 3, 2020

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“The Age of Phillis illuminates an unbroken lineage, the way one poet pays homage to another and keeps the continuum for which we are all indebted. This is a necessary and visceral book, that brings to life the fullness of Wheatley.” —Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahir Suite

In the shadow of the American Revolution, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry, Poems on various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). When Wheatley’s book appeared, her words would challenge Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Her words would astound many and irritate others, but one thing was clear: this young woman was extraordinary. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood with her parents in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters, and her untimely death at the age of about thirty-three.

Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley’s “age”—the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley’s relationship to black people and their individual “mercies” is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history. Read a sample poem below:

mothering #1

Yaay, Someplace in the Gambia, c. 1753

after

the after-birth

is delivered

the mother stops

holding her breath

the mid-wife gives

what came before

her just-washed pain

her insanity pain

an undeserved pain

a God-given pain

oh oh oh pain

drum-talking pain

witnessing pain

Allah

a mother offers

You this gift

prays You find

it acceptable

her living pain

her creature pain

her pretty-little-baby

pain

HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS is a poet whose work examines culture, religion, history, and family. She is the author of four other books of poetry, including The Glory Gets, and the recipient of the 2018 Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress. An elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, she teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma where she is a professor of English.

The Age of Phillis, forthcoming from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

by selliott • June 3, 2019

Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce we have secured the world rights to The Age of Phillis, a new volume of poetry by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who is represented by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company.

The Age of Phillis is the result of over a decade of research and contemplation by Jeffers. She draws on historical sources to take readers into the world of Phillis Wheatley, the first black American woman to publish a book. Wheatley published a volume of poetry entitled Poems of Various Subjects, Religion, and Morals on September 1, 1773. Jeffers imagines Wheatley’s thoughts as she navigates life as an intellectual, as an enslaved person, as an observant poet, and as a woman of African descent—eventually a freed woman, and wife, whose life would be cut short by poverty and illness.

Wesleyan plans for for a Spring 2020 publication date.

About the Author

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of four previous books of poetry including The Glory Gets, published by Wesleyan University Press in May 2015. Her other books are: The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State, 2000)—selected by Lucille Clifton for the Wick Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan, 2003), and Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois, 2007).

Her poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, African American Review, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Obsidian III, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and has been anthologized in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2011) and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (Georgia, 2009). Her critical writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Jeffers has received numerous awards and honors, including a Witter Bynner Fellowship through the Library of Congress, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Julia Peterkin Award for Poetry, the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, a lifetime achievement honor, and an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation for Women Writers. For her research on Phillis Wheatley, Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, a learned organization for the study of early American history and culture, to which fourteen US presidents have elected. She is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

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Celebrating 10 Years of “Night’s Dancer” by Yaël Tamar Lewin

Announcing “The Past”

Announcing “Darby Chronicles”

Announcing “The Blue Split Compartments”

Celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride

Announcing “A Body in Fukushima” by Eiko Otake and William Johnston