On the
controversial autobiography that should be required reading whatever its genre.
Fifteen years
after the publication of John Woolman’s journal, the ex-slave turned British
sailor, hairdresser, French horn player, and abolitionist (among his many other
roles) Olaudah Equiano published The Interesting Narrative
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789).
Equiano’s book was an international bestseller and has remained famous and
significant as the first published autobiography by an African American
(although that category, like any, is complicated when it comes to Equiano’s
identity), but in recent years elements of its authenticity have been
challenged. Scholar
Vincent Carretta has unearthed evidence that suggests that Equiano may have
been born in the Carolinas, and thus that the narrative’s African-set opening
chapters were fabrications, created to enhance Equiano’s credibility as both an
ex-slave and an abolitionist. The evidence is very
ambiguous and open to continued debate, but certainly Carretta’s work has
complicated any easy categorization of Equiano’s book as autobiography.
I dedicated a
chapter of my
second book to Equiano’s narrative, and addressed this controversy at
length there. I made a couple of central points about the book’s opening images
of Africa: that whatever their factual authenticity, they reveal a great deal
about late 18th century images of Africa, and its relationship to
the multiple other places (America, the Caribbean, England, the world of
transatlantic trade) through which Equiano moved; and that Equiano’s choice to
define himself, from his book’s title on, as “the African,” whether purely
autobiographical or more voluntary, is an important one that can tell us a lot
about constructions and complications of identity in his era, in those
different settings and communities, and in how we have perceived and read him
and his book in the centuries since. None of that means that the archival work
of scholars like Carretta isn’t important, or that trying to learn the factual
details of Equiano’s life doesn’t impact how we read and analyze his narrative—but
to my mind, autobiographical writing is always more about contexts and
communities, multiple and constructed identities and audiences, than the life
story of one individual; and Equiano’s has much to tell us on those levels in
any case.
Of the many such
lessons Equiano’s book has to offer, the many reasons why I believe his
narrative should be just as famous and foundational for American audiences as Ben Franklin’s, I
would highlight in particular his striking evolutions, that huge range of
stages and roles to which I alluded in my opening description above. In his
time in the Caribbean alone Equiano was both a slave and an overseer, a sailor
and a captain, a laborer and a merchant, among other shifts. Those changes,
like the opportunity to purchase his own freedom that enabled most of them,
were far from the norm for African slaves, and it would be important not to see
Equiano’s life or book as broadly representative of that (or any) community. If
we did make Equiano’s narrative required American reading, that is, we would
want to pair it with a text like Frederick
Douglass’ or Harriet Jacobs’,
one that better captures the realities and histories of slavery. But on the
other hand, just as Douglass and Jacobs moved through multiple stages and
identities in their inspiring lives, Equiano’s amazingly varied life
exemplifies such evolutions, and his narrative thus presents a unique and vital
way for us to understand the constructions, revisions, and stories that have
always comprised identity in America.
Next
autobiographer tomorrow,
Ben
PS.
What do you think? Other life writings you’d highlight for the weekend post?
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