"We'll call her Phillis."

In 1761, a young African girl was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston. The family named her Phillis after the schooner that transported her to slavery. Kidnapped from her home in Africa and shipped to America, she had everything taken away from her—her family, her name, her language.

But Phillis Wheatley was no ordinary young girl. She had an intense desire to learn, and the Wheatleys encouraged her in this passion, breaking with an unwritten rule in New England to keep slave illiterate.

She became a poet, and had a book of verse published. With the publication of this book, Phillis Wheatley established herself as the first black woman poet America had ever known. She also found what had been taken away from her and from slaves everywhere: a voice of her own.

From the dust jacket