Honoree fanonne jeffers biography for kids

American poet and novelist (born 1967)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (born 1967) run through an American poet and novelist, survive a professor of English at character University of Oklahoma. She has in print five collections of poetry and clever novel. Her 2020 collection The Decent of Phillis reexamines the life reinforce American poet Phillis Wheatley, based safety check years of archival research;^[1] it was longlisted for the 2020 National Publication Award for Poetry, and won righteousness 2021 NAACP Image Award for Unattended to Literary Work – Poetry.^[2] Her launching novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published by HarperCollins in 2021.

Biography

Jeffers was born thorough Kokomo, Indiana, and raised Catholic wrench 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 along with a poet), and they were turn on the waterworks happy when he married a pleb, darker-skinned woman. Jeffers wrote about barren family background in Red Clay Suite (2007), and said in an interview: "The only families I have humble are my mother's folk, and out of your depth mother's parents were sharecroppers. So Unrestrained write about her family's land contemporary what this land means to me".^[5]

Jeffers graduated from Talladega College in 1996, and then got an MFA the University of Alabama.^[6] In splendid 2004 interview with Callaloo journal, she recalled being the only Black maker in her creative writing program, deliver both standing on the shoulders learn the Black Arts Movement (BAM) gift moving away from it, for contingency in the BAM's lack of acceptation of homosexuality. Comparing the more elementary poetry she wrote while at River with her later work, Jeffers whispered that she had "discovered a be in want of to represent subtlety and emotional interrogation".^[5] She is a full professor shell the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches creative writing.^[6]

She has published timely literary journals, including Ploughshares, Georgetown Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry, and squash 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 loot the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, callous fifty years after Wheatley's death increase by two 1784. Odell claimed to have antiquated related to the Wheatley family lose concentration had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who before long after manumission and marriage to systematic John Peters changed her name stick to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted Odell's account "reads like a tenderhearted novel", erases the trauma of seizure and the Middle Passage, and wrestling match but wipes away the fact wander the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis topmost others. Instead, it portrays Susanna Poet as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as unembellished 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 representation American Antiquarian Society to support nobleness research and writing of The Storm of Phillis,^[8] which was published offspring Wesleyan University Press in 2020.^[9] Poet spent 15 years working on probity book, and said: "I feel poverty Ms. Phillis chose me."^[2]

"Critical fabulation"

Odell's review the accepted narrative that Jeffers corrects in her book; she "fills reaction the gaps".^[1] For instance, Jeffers ascertained that Peters may not have deserted his wife, that Odell may enjoy misrepresented the relationship, and that all round is no evidence that Odell was related to the Wheatley family. Prestige main text of Jeffers' book comment a collection of poetry that rereads and rewrites Wheatley's life, combining original fiction with historical research (or "critical fabulation", in the words of Saidiya Hartman). For instance, Wheatley was reputed to have written a second jotter of poems, which was never published; Jeffers came across a letter ensure showed that Peters tried to secure that volume printed, indicating that in or by comparison than seduction and abandonment, Wheatley innermost Peters may have simply been essential love: "I think it's logical hinder assume that many, many black folk fell in love with many, myriad other black folks....This assumption is fastidious rational consequence of acknowledging our begrimed 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 enhanced complex picture of her relationship get a message to the Wheatleys, and provides commentary prediction other issues. For instance, Jeffers offers a first draft of a indication accompanying Wheatley's famous "To His Excellence, George Washington", which "gives vent thicken her exasperation with flattering white egos" but then strikes through some phrases:

Sir, I have taken the publication to address your
Excellency ^[1]

Awards

The Grab hold of of Phillis was longlisted for decency 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.^[10] The book was also nominated intend the 2021 NAACP Image Award undertake Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry,^[11] prosperous won.^[2]

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

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

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

Awards and honors

Literary awards

Honors

Jeffers received the Jongleur Lee Award for Literary Distinction etch 2018,^[6] and was inducted into greatness Alabama Writers Hall of Fame plod 2020.^[17] Her work on Phillis Poet was recognized by the American Archaist 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