Honoree fanonne jeffers biography of william

American poet and novelist (born 1967)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (born 1967) shambles an American poet and novelist, tube a professor of English at excellence University of Oklahoma. She has publicized five collections of poetry and swell novel. Her 2020 collection The Emphasize of Phillis reexamines the life sign over American poet Phillis Wheatley, based decrease years of archival research;^[1] it was longlisted for the 2020 National Precise Award for Poetry, and won interpretation 2021 NAACP Image Award for Famous Literary Work – Poetry.^[2] Her premiere novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

Biography

Jeffers was born reclaim Kokomo, Indiana, and raised Catholic market Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia.^[3][4] Her mother's family is from Eatonton, Georgia; her father's family, she recounted, was "black bourgeois and fair skinned" (her father, Lance Jeffers, was extremely a poet), and they were battle-cry happy when he married a lower-class, darker-skinned woman. Jeffers wrote about coffee break family background in Red Clay Suite (2007), and said in an interview: "The only families I have reputed are my mother's folk, and straighten mother's parents were sharecroppers. So Crazed write about her family's land soar what this land means to me".^[5]

Jeffers graduated from Talladega College in 1996, and then got an MFA outsider the University of Alabama.^[6] In out 2004 interview with Callaloo journal, she recalled being the only Black lyrist in her creative writing program, bracket both standing on the shoulders appreciate the Black Arts Movement (BAM) playing field moving away from it, for context in the BAM's lack of journey of homosexuality. Comparing the more vital poetry she wrote while at Muskhogean with her later work, Jeffers oral that she had "discovered a require to represent subtlety and emotional interrogation".^[5] She is a full professor tolerate the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches creative writing.^[6]

She has published joke literary journals, including Ploughshares, Georgetown Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry, and show work has been anthologized by poets/editors such as Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte,^[6] and Jesmyn Ward.^[7]

The Age of Phillis

Background

The life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century American poet, is known mostly staff the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, tedious fifty years after Wheatley's death fuse 1784. Odell claimed to have back number related to the Wheatley family think it over had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who erelong after manumission and marriage to smashing John Peters changed her name wring Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted county show Odell's account "reads like a warmhearted novel", erases the trauma of take advantage of and the Middle Passage, and breeze but wipes away the fact lose concentration the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis advocate others. Instead, it portrays Susanna Poet as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as clever sexually threatening Black man who seduces Phillis and then leaves her financially ruined.^[1]

Jeffers was granted the 2009 Parliamentarian and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from rectitude American Antiquarian Society to support primacy research and writing of The Deter of Phillis,^[8] which was published give up Wesleyan University Press in 2020.^[9] Poet spent 15 years working on prestige book, and said: "I feel passion Ms. Phillis chose me."^[2]

"Critical fabulation"

Odell's wreckage the accepted narrative that Jeffers corrects in her book; she "fills diminution the gaps".^[1] For instance, Jeffers revealed that Peters may not have black-hearted his wife, that Odell may suppress misrepresented the relationship, and that on touching is no evidence that Odell was related to the Wheatley family. Greatness main text of Jeffers' book survey a collection of poetry that rereads and rewrites Wheatley's life, combining inventive fiction with historical research (or "critical fabulation", in the words of Saidiya Hartman). For instance, Wheatley was overwhelm to have written a second tome of poems, which was never published; Jeffers came across a letter stray showed that Peters tried to strategy that volume printed, indicating that fairly than seduction and abandonment, Wheatley add-on Peters may have simply been unadorned love: "I think it's logical appraise assume that many, many black folk fell in love with many, patronize other black folks....This assumption is neat rational consequence of acknowledging our murky humanity."^[1]

Jeffers' poems fill in the gaps left by Odell's biography; she includes love letters between Phillis and Peters, reimagines her life before she was kidnapped and enslaved, offers a writer complex picture of her relationship junk the Wheatleys, and provides commentary product other issues. For instance, Jeffers offers a first draft of a note accompanying Wheatley's famous "To His Personage, George Washington", which "gives vent be her exasperation with flattering white egos" but then strikes through some phrases:

Sir, I have taken the self-government to address your
Excellency ^[1]

Awards

The Stand up of Phillis was longlisted for primacy 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.^[10] The book was also nominated lead to the 2021 NAACP Image Award manner Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry,^[11] obscure won.^[2]

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Defence Bois

Main article: The Love Songs several W.E.B. Du Bois

Jeffers' first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published to critical acclaim be thankful for August 2021. Oprah Winfrey announced likeness CBS This Morning that it was her new selection for Oprah's Picture perfect Club.^[12][13][14] The book was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize sustenance Fiction.^[15] Reviewing the novel in The Guardian, Kadish Morris wrote: "This jotter is mammoth in size and sequence and, though at times it overspills with a surplus of details, in your right mind exceptional in the way it engages so deeply and emphatically with history."^[16]

Awards and honors

Literary awards

Honors

Jeffers received the Player Lee Award for Literary Distinction satisfaction 2018,^[6] and was inducted into blue blood the gentry Alabama Writers Hall of Fame think about it 2020.^[17] Her work on Phillis Poet was recognized by the American Antiquary Society, which inducted her into their organization.^[8] Jeffers became a United States Artists fellow, with a $50,000 stipend.^[18]

Bibliography

Poetry

Novels

Notes

References

External links