...Olaudah Equiano is ex-African slave who wrote his own autobiography “The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano” in his autobiography, he says that he was born in the country of what is now Nigeria. Equiano was kidnapped and sold into slavery when he was just a child. During this time, he went through what was known as the middle passage on a slave ship bound for the New World. Equiano was then shipped to Virginia to work weeding grass and gathering stones after a short time working in Barbados. Equiano was eventually bought by a naval captain for about £40 named Gustavas Vassa. Equiano was 12 when the captain brought him to England, and While he was there he stayed at Blackheath located in London with the Guerin family who was relatives to the naval captain. While he was there...
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...The Autobiography of Olaudah Equiano is a woeful recount of an African boy who was kidnapped into slavery. However, with the story of Olaudah Equiano comes a question. Was Equiano an African who merely wanted to share his life’s story or was he born in South Carolina and wrote this as a calculated attempt to “increase the odium against the West India planters?” as Vincent Carretta states. If the first presumption is correct, then all is well and the story can be revered as a highly respected expositional work of history. Although, if the second is correct, then this calls into question Equiano’s right to play the victim in representing the slaves who suffered through the Middle Passage. The answer to this highly debated question lies in the accuracy of his details, the historical validity of his stories, and the fact that pro-slavery writers are the source of the original doubt. In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano describes his experience of the Middle Passage with many details. For example, one of the most notable details he notes of the slave ship was the horrible stench that reeked from the lower deck. Equiano writes, “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a...
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...Bibliography: Olaudah Equiano
Imbarrato, Susan Clair. "Equiano, Olaudah." Infobase Learning - Login. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
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...Olaudah Equiano was enslaved during the historic Atlantic Slave Trade, in the late 1700’s and into the 1800’s. Though nobody could argue that slavery was “good” or even “humane,” Equiano did have the fortune of learning skills most other slaves didn’t while serving his master. Equiano learned the skills of writing and arithmetic, among others, and was able to buy his freedom after laboring for years. After he earned his freedom, Equiano became an abolitionist speaker and writer, striving to rid the world of slavery. He wrote an autobiography entitled The Life of Olaudah Equiano, which was first published in 1789, but revised and released yet again in 1814. Assumably, words were very important to Equiano and chosen with care. The excerpt...
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...the recording of an event or by leading a revolution.” In my essay the person who will be the topic is “Olaudah Equiano”. I am to choose an individual and discuss their impact on world history. Olaudah Equiano, who was born 1745 in West Africa, contributed to a ton of accomplishments. He was an abolitionist and former slave who was the author of “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano”; Written by Himself. Equiano’s Narrative told the story of his capture and life in bondage. At 11 years old, while caring for the family compound, he was kidnaped along with his sister. The two were taken away from the place where they grew up, and sold to the neighborhood slave traders. Following a concise time of remains in Africa, in 1755 Equiano was captured and sold to the European slave brokers, who then transported him over the Atlantic to Barbados in the West Independents in 1756. In Virginia, Equiano was bought by Michael Pascal, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Pascal gave Equiano the name of Gustavus Vassa, which stayed with him for the better part of his lifetime. Domestic slaves in...
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...Olaudah Equiano, was a former enslaved African, seaman and merchant who wrote an autobiography depicting the horrors of slavery and lobbied Parliament for its abolition. In his biography, he records he was born in what is now Nigeria, kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child. He then endured the middle passage on a slave ship bound for the New World. After a short period of time in Barbados, Equiano was shipped to Virginia and put to work weeding grass and gathering stones. In 1757, he was bought by a naval captain (Captain Pascal) for about £40, who named him Gustavas Vassa. Equiano was about 12 when he first arrived in England. For part of that time he stayed at Blackheath in London with the Guerin family (relatives of Pascal). It...
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...Olaudah Equiano was taken by force at the age of eleven from his West African village of Benin. He was then put on a ship to travel through the rough “Middle Passage” of the Atlantic Ocean to become a slave in the West Indies. In the West Indies (Barbados) he was put up for sale to work in the sugar plantations. Then in 1766, he was sold to a Virginian farmer to be a slave there. He was a slave in North America for ten years, and then he was allowed to buy his freedom. He left North American and went to Great Britain. In Great Britain he worked as a barber and became an abolish nest. He spoke out against slavery and in 1789 wrote a book about his life called “The Interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African”,...
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...Juxtaposition: Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano There was a long dreadful journey that carried slaves and went from Africa to other European colonies called the Middle Passage. Two former slaves preserved through all the odds against them to become greater than just a servant. Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano were two slaves who were kidnapped from Africa at a young age. Wheatley and Equiano have similar backgrounds and many differences that are very impactful to African American history. Wheatley and Equiano both had to go through severe hardships that paved the way for others in their same position to strive better. They both phenomenal writers that were extremely impactful to everyone. Although they were both slaves they didn’t...
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...Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano was born in the Eboe province in Africa, which is in southern Nigeria today, in 1745. He was the son of an African chief. At the age of 11, he and his sister were captured by slavers and put on a ship to experience the horrors of the Middle Passage. He was served under various masters until, with enough money, purchased his freedom in 1766. During a visit to London, he became involved with an abolitionist movement. He petitioned to the Queen in 1788 and even wrote an autobiography called: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. 10 years after his death, slavery was abolished in Great Britain. Although Equiano did not live to see these events, his actions as an abolitionist played an important part in bringing them about. In the mid to late 18th century, Olaudah Equiano was an outstanding example of courage and perseverance through his experiences as a slave, his societal class, and his religion. Equiano was captured at an early age in his homeland and shipped across the Atlantic to Barbados and then Virginia. He was then quickly purchased by a Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Michael Pascal, who renamed him 'Gustavus Vassa' after the 16th-century Swedish king. Equiano wished, as any slave of that day, to be freed. Unfortunately, Pascal learning of Equiano's desire, and cruelly sold him...
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...The Africans had prior knowledge in the agricultural methods of both of these crops and were beneficial to the Europeans who were just starting the agricultural process in America. Olaudah Equiano, a former slave born in Africa, tells of his own experience of being kidnapped as a young boy and how the slaves were treated more like animals than human beings in his autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. After being sold multiple times to various African families, Olaudah was then taken to the coast and loaded on a slave ship bound for the white people’s country. Once on the slave ship, the Africans were chained together on deck or taken down to the holds below where they were kept in unsanitary conditions, with little food or water (Equiano, 20-22). Numerous Africans would rather have died than to be sold and enslaved to the white Europeans. For instance, “we had about 12 negroes did willfully drown themselves, and other starv’d themselves to death; for ‘tis their belief that when they die they return home to their own country and friends again” (Phillips, 1). Slaves were regarded as an inferior race, property at the disposal of their masters and...
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...abolitionist movement a buzzing moral influence; except it may not be exact. Therein lays the mystery: Because if the gentleman who penned "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African" was not born in Africa, but rather born into slavery in South Carolina -- as Vincent Carretta suggests -- then who was he? Where did he learn to speak fluent Igbo? And how did he obtain such agonizing details about life aboard an 18th-century slave vessel? The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains. . . . The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. (Equiano, 1789) In that lies the controversy: Carretta's findings, detailed in his biography of Equiano, have ignited a blaze in academic life, for the most part among those who have extensively considered Equiano the "black Ben Franklin" all on the weight of his auto biography. Given that Equiano's was in print first, Carretta argues that Franklin should be called the "White Equiano." No one questions that Equiano was the ultimate self-made man, cultured, and intellectual. A slave, who bought his own way to...
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...Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano wrote tremendously successful literary pieces that shaped the abolition movement. In both Equiano’s narrative and Wheatley’s book of poems, they reflect the similar experience of slavery, which greatly shapes the purpose and style of the author’s pieces. Much like Equiano, Phillis Wheatley was born in an African village. The only good memory recalled of her life in Africa was of her mother performing daily rituals to the rising sun in the mornings. She had the advantage of being purchased by Christian missionaries who were very kind to her. Her owners taught her to read and write, which led her to be the first African American woman to be published as a poet. It also caused her writing to be much more classical with a discreet sense of emotion. She used many allusions and...
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...The seminar will give an overview of representative American literary works in their cultural context from the colonial period to the end of the nineteenth century. Requirements • Regular class attendance and participation • Presentation on a chosen theme • Weekly reading log (if you miss more than two weekly entries, your entire work fails) • Essay of 2 500 words due May 9, and its oral presentation. Calendar of meetings and assignments | |Themes, authors, primary texts |Critical reading | |Feb 8 |Introductions | | |Feb 15 |The Puritan Imagination I |IAS: “New Founde Land” | | |From: Mary Rowlandson: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. |CHLUS: “Jonathan Edwards […] and the Great Awakening | | |From: John Winthrop: A Model of Christian Charity. | | | |From: Jonathan Edwards: Personal Narrative. | | |Feb 22 |The Puritan Imagination II. |IAS: “New Founde Land” | | |Anne Bradstreet: “The Author...
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...African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. OPTIONAL REFERENCES Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1968. hooks, bell. Teaching to Trangress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Pearson Education, 2001. Youngs, J. William T. American Realities: Historical Episodes-From First Settlements to the Civil War. New York: Longman, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. COURSE DESCRIPTION: A survey of African American literature, introducing students to genres, trends, and major periods of African American literature, ranging from the 17th-, 18th- and 19th- century autobiographies and narratives to 20tth –century works. Authors include: Jupiter Hammon, Briton Hammon, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, Haki Madhubuti, Ton Cade Bambara, and August Wilson. COURSE OBJECTIVES By the end of this course, you will: o be able to distinguish amongst genres of literature; o be familiar with various works by and about African American writers in various literary genres; o be familiar with the Black Aesthetic, as well as other literary theories; o gain...
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...Bibliographic Essay on African American History Introduction In the essay “On the Evolution of Scholarship in Afro- American History” the eminent historian John Hope Franklin declared “Every generation has the opportunity to write its own history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.”1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1  Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The...
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