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Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. Olaudah Equiano. Freedman Sailor Author Abolitionist (person who takes measures to end slavery). Equiano (1745-1797). Son of an African Ibo chieftain

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Olaudah Equiano

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  1. Olaudah Equiano The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

  2. Olaudah Equiano • Freedman • Sailor • Author • Abolitionist (person who takes measures to end slavery)

  3. Equiano (1745-1797) • Son of an African Ibo chieftain • He was eleven years old when he and his sister were kidnapped from their home in West Africa. • They were sold into slavery.

  4. Olaudah Equiano • wrote the first outstanding autobiography in slave narrative literature. • his African name meant "vicissitude" or "fortune"

  5. Travels to America • Separated from his sister, sent to the West Indies, then to Virginia. • Purchased by a British sea captain, and served at sea.

  6. Renamed! • Renamed Gustavus Vassa, but he changed his name back later. • Enslaved under name Gustavus for ten years.

  7. Freedom! • He bought his own freedom and settled in England. • 1789 – published narrative to alert people to the plight of slaves on ships.

  8. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of O. Equiano, or G. Vassa, the African • written in 1787-1788 partly to vindicate his role in the Sierra Leone affair, as well as to recount his exemplary rise from slavery to freedom and to argue the case for abolition of the slave trade.

  9. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of O. Equiano continued… • one critic (G. I. Jones, 1967) has doubted Equiano's sole authorship because of its stylistic felicities, there is little doubt that the work was essentially his own • an account of action in which the realities and iniquities of slavery and the slave trade emerge eloquently in the telling of his own story

  10. Life and Death • Despite his sense of mission, Equiano was destined never to return to Africa. He lectured extensively in Britain against the slave trade during the 1790s and married an English girl, Susan (or Susanne) Cullen of Ely, in April 1792. He is believed to have died in London in 1801.

  11. Slave Narrative • Autobiographical account of a person’s life as a slave. • Used to alert people to slavery situation. • Often very descriptive.

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