"At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it."
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Lorna Dee Cervantes, Interview in Bill Moyers, Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley
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Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was a slave in Boston, Massachusetts, where her master's family taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was the first published book by an African American. It was published in London because Bostonian publishers refused. In London she met the Countess of Huntington.
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