We whose names are underwritten, do assure the World, that the poems in the following Page, were (as we verily believe,) written by phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa. […] She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.

Attestation in Phillis Wheatley's

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

The poems written by this young negro bear no endemial marks of solar fire or spirit. They are merely imitative; and, indeed, most of those people have a turn for imitation, though they have little or none for invention.

Anonymous reviewer of Wheatley's poems in 1764 (Shields 267)

It was not natural. And she was the first. […] Phillis Miracle Wheatley: The first Black human being to be published in America. […] But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected […] frequently dismissed […] because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. […] And it was not natural. And she was the first. […] This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America; that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.

June Jordan (252, 254, 261)