Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” for the First Time in an Online Undergraduate Women’s Literature Course

As one of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ most famous poems, “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is often introduced to undergraduates; however, it is also an often-misunderstood text by undergraduate and graduate students alike when they first read it. Students often believe that Wheatley Peters is happy about her condition as an enslaved person in America and out of Africa. But upon deeper analysis of her word choice, use of punctuation, and biblical references, a reader can see her unique voice as an enslaved person criticizing slavery through sarcasm. Such responses can discourage instructors from teaching the poem, especially in online environments where immediate feedback from the instructor to encourage students to read the poem’s sophistication is usually not possible. This essay showcases the lesson plan I developed in the National Writing Project (NWP) community of practice for teaching “On Being Brought from Africa to America” for an asynchronous online Women in Literature class and my teaching the course at Los Angeles Harbor College, a community college in Wilmington, California. I write this essay in part to encourage instructors who may never have taught her poetry or taught Phillis Wheatley Peters before to teach her work even if their students have no prior knowledge of her writing or its eighteenth-century contexts. I also want to emphasize the value of teaching difficult, provocative texts in online environments with proper lesson planning and supporting students by providing clear guidance and using the multimodal aspects of online teaching to good effect.