A uniquely compelling story of slavery and liberation

Review of The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings by Olaudah Equiano

This is a remarkable document of an extraordinary life. Abducted at 11 somewhere in Nigeria, Equiano survives the  middle passage, takes on a new identity and name, and thrives to the point of purchasing his own freedom. Throughout, the reader experiences every stage of his life, from the terror and uncertainty to the achievement of a career as a sailor and then a freeman. The details, including a long description of his origins in western Africa, are wonderfully rendered and consistently fascinating in historical terms. It is on a par with the Life of Frederick Douglas.

He starts with the base of his life in an almost anthropological description of his home in what today is southern Nigeria. It serves as a way to contrast his later life with the communal culture he grew up in. Once abducted, he went on a terrifying journey, finding for a time his sister, who was taken away from him in the first of many needless cruelties. Interestingly, he had a series of kind masters in Africa, but eventually was sold to Europeans, who looked strange to him and exhibited a level of brutality he found unimaginable.

His life as a slave in the western hemisphere began with some luck: a captain took him on, treated him well, and promised to release him at the end of the War. This offered many opportunities that life as a plantation slave would not have. Equiano, renamed Gustavus Vassa, became an extremely able sailor and fighter, treated on the ship as an equal and working his way up the ranks, if always as assistant to the captain. It was the beginning of his disappointments with owners that reneged on their promises or others who took advantage of his lack of legal standing as a black to steal from him and exploit him.

During this time, even as he was swindled out of many earnings, he developed into a highly competent trader, eventually saving enough to buy his freedom. At every turn, his life was fraught with danger from the caprices of the white men around him. It is a riveting read. Until he moved to England, in the Caribbean he faced dangers every day of kidnapping and being resold into slavery to facing down white men refusing to honor the debts owed to him.

A major theme in the book is his religious conversion to Methodism. While this did not appeal to me as something with which to identify, it is an interesting story about the meaning of religion then. Faith guided many aspects of his life.

Equiano jumps from the pages as an exceptional man – honest, gifted with intelligence and formidable abilities, energetic enough to survive and thrive. He knew how to cultivate important and powerful people, must have had great personal charm, and comes out well and sometimes even on top, all the time facing slights to his dignity and standing. In England, this memoir became an enormous best seller, which he published himself rather than selling it to a book manufacturer; this enabled him to profit from it for the rest of his life because there was no copyright protection. He even married a white woman and was viewed as a gentleman.

This is one of the great slave narratives. Though some scholars believe he aggrandized himself with misleading stories and the occasional lie or exaggeration, we can never know the extent or validity of these charges.

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