American Literature - Genius Papers

1) Post on one of Bradstreet’s poems OR on the prose letter she writes to her children. What do you see as a purpose or intent of her work? What impresses or surprises you about her skill as a poet? What do you think of “An Author to Her Book?” Is she pretending to be more distressed than she really is? Whatever statement you make, you MUST use a brief quote or example from the work to back up your statement.

2) Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative is almost certainly the only ex-slave narrative written by someone who experienced life as a free person in Africa, capture, and eventual transport to the New World as cargo/ a slave. Once he becomes free, Equiano writes his story to reveal how it feels to experience freedom until 11 and then to experience and observe the horrors of slavery and the slave trade. He wants to highlight the equal humanity of Africans and Europeans and show that Africans also have an equal right to freedom and self-determination. Briefly what for you was a particularly striking experience he describes or observation he makes in his narrative.

OLAUDAH EQUIANO
Published in London in 1789, The Interesting Life of Olaudah
Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African may be the first American slave or
ex-slave narrative. According to the introduction in your anthology:
No black person before the abolitionist Frederick Douglass . . . spoke
so movingly to American readers about the inhumanity of slavery,
and no work before Douglass’s Narrative had such an impact on the
antislavery movement. Incorporating the vocabulary and ideals of
the Enlightenment – particularly the belief that sentiment linked all
human beings and thus provided a basis for universal claims to
human rights – Equiano made a powerful case for the countless
disenfranchised and exploited [enslaved] workers whose labor fueled
the new mercantilism. In American literature, replete with self-made
figures who voyage from innocence to experience, Equiano’s story is
in a class by itself both for the challenges he faced and for the
transformations he experienced. (731-732)
Equiano’s Narrative is very different from most ex-slave narratives; it is
considered a hybrid text – a combination captivity narrative, abolitionist
treatise, sea adventure, and coming-of age story or Bildungsroman.
Equiano’s primary goal or intent is to use his narrative to petition for
the abolition of slavery by demonstrating the equal humanity of Africans.
Recurring themes:
African humanity, intelligence, and self-actualization.
The diversity of African peoples.
Difference between African slavery and New World slavery.
Idyllic depiction of Ibo life and culture.
Savagery of the Middle Passage.
Moral outrage at the atrocities of chattel or New World slavery.
Argument for immediate and categorical abolition of slavery.
Physical and psychological transition from self as person to self as property
to self as property owner.
Equiano’s conversion to Christianity.
Blacks’ ability to assimilate into white society and culture.
Black people’s capacity for successful economic development.
Your text also notes that Equiano did not define himself as African
American nor Anglo African. “He came to exemplify the Atlantic Rim,
presenting himself as someone who at various times called Africa, the
Americas, and Europe his home” (732). Put another way, Equiano has
come to exemplify the Black Atlantic diaspora. Diaspora means
“scattering” and in this case refers to those taken from their African
homelands, shipped across the Atlantic through what was called the Middle
Passage, and sold into slavery in the Americas. As the introduction notes,
Equiano bought his freedom in 1766: “Having gained his liberty by paying
forty pounds – money earned by carrying on his own business while
managing King’s – he never set foot on American soil again” (732).
Until 2018, Equiano’s Narrative was the only narrative in which the
writer documented his personal experience of the deeply traumatic Middle
Passage. See the link below.*
In 2005, scholar Vincent Caretta published an article claiming that
Equiano was actually born in South Carolina and that instead of writing an
autobiographical account, Equiano invented an African identity and
combined stories he had heard from actual “saltwater” slaves to create his
narrative. Saltwater slaves refers to those people born in Africa who were
captured, enslaved, and brought to the Americas in contrast to “Creole”
slaves who were born into slavery in the Americas. Carnetta’s claim has
not been proven or disproven. And Carnetta has never produced
compelling evidence to support his claim. Your introduction notes that
given the possibility that Equiano’s narrative is a composite rather than
solely a personal account, the narrative “can be understood as an example
of a witness narrative . . . the testimony of someone from a marginalized
group who speaks in the first person for the entire group’s history. To
make his life appear more representative, Equiano may have merged his
experiences
with those of the voiceless Africans who endured the horrors of the Middle
Passage” (732).
Literary scholar Demetrius Eudell observes that if elements of
Equiano’s account are historical fiction, it demonstrates the power of
literature to recover and convey lost histories, for the narrative powerfully
captures and analyzes the experience of saltwater slaves. Equiano’s
narrative depicts the change in consciousness that occurs in those captured
Africans who went from Being Human — persons with family, nation,
culture, spiritual beliefs and practices — to being legally designated a
commodity – a thing bought and sold in the marketplace with no legal
standing: “Equiano’s narrative could also be analyzed in terms of the
powerful effects that it would have on the interpretation of a new
experience and reality . . . reflecting a new model of identity, of Being
Human, one that had been at the time only recently brought into existence”
(230). In other words, Equiano’s narrative and other ex-slave narratives
tell the story of what it was like to live the “American distinction of slaves
being not only physically subordinated but also conceptually imagined out
of the human species” (231).
Clearly there is quite a bit to process in studying a type of narrative that
may be unfamiliar to you. Consider the following summary points:
1.) The Atlantic or triangular slave trade was foundational to global
capitalism and to the economies of England, France, Portugal and the
United States in particular. It was a thriving economic enterprise for 3
centuries with the 18th century or 1700s being the height of the slave trade.
2.) The Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in England in 1807 and in the
United States in 1808. Equiano’s Narrative had a significant impact on the
fight to outlaw the slave trade as his account leaves no doubt as to his
intelligence and full humanity.
3.) Through the account of his experiences, Equiano shows the CRITICAL
DIFFERENCE between African slavery and slavery in the Americas. Before
the international slave trade, one could be enslaved as punishment for a
crime or if captured in battle between rival ethnic groups or tribes. Most
significant difference – slaves were not dehumanized and could
be incorporated into families they had entered as slaves.
4.) The international slave trade was a very lucrative business.
Enslaved people were no longer a byproduct of battle; acquiring
slaves to sell to the Europeans became the point of battles
between tribes. Some tribes became quite wealthy as consistent
suppliers of slaves to the booming New World market.
5.) It is estimated that between 15 and 50 million people were taken from
mostly West Africa and shipped as cargo to the Americas. The wide
variation is because slave ships often falsified their records so that they
could get insurance coverage for what was a very risky business. They
would pack more people into the ships than insurance companies
considered “safe” so that they could receive the coverage.
6.) Pay particular attention to Equiano’s description of his reaction to being
brought aboard a slave ship (740). This is THE turning point in the
narrative. He sees the white men on board the ship as savages and fears
that they are cannibals who plan to eat him. Note that he sees them this
way because of how they are treating him, NOT because of some
preconceived prejudice about white people. Equiano provides a first person
narrative of what it was like to be “cargo” on a slave ship. He details the
matter-of-fact brutality in the treatment of Africans as well as the treatment
of the ship’s crew.
7.) Note the powerful impact becoming a Christian has on Equiano.
Despite the challenges he faces once he reaches the Americas, he
continually describes himself as favored by Providence. Note also how he
uses supposedly shared Christian beliefs to condemn a slave trade
conducted by those who claimed to be Christians:
O, ye nominal Christians! Might not an African ask you – Learned
you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you
would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are torn
from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?
Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are
the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their
separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and
thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery, with the small
comfort of being together, and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?
Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, or
husbands their wives? Surely, this is a new refinement in cruelty,
which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates
distress, and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery.
(744)
8.) Throughout the narrative, we note Equiano’s strong sense of self.
Captured at 11, his identity and sense of self had already been formed based
on his experiences as an Ibo living in West Africa. He was enslaved as a
pre-teen rather than being subjected to slavery from birth. In the midst of
his experiences as an enslaved person, Equiano is able to maintain a very
strong sense of possibility for himself as a free person. In other words, he
aspired. Enslavers considered aspiration among enslaved people very
dangerous and they worked very hard to destroy squelch it. Aspiration
means the desire to be more than you presently are, to do more than you
presently do. Among enslaved people this could lead to slave revolts,
escape, sabotage of the workings of the plantation, etc. Aspiration means
that you are human. Equiano’s clear depiction of a self that preceded
enslavement is a primary reason why I believe that in the Narrative,
Equiano is relating a personal experience. He avoids the most vicious
indoctrination that most enslaved people were subjected to, as he
repeatedly relates. Equiano never sees himself as “a slave.” Slavery is an
unfortunate circumstance for him. This is because he has been someone
else and because as a seaman, he has a range of experiences that most
people have not had. This is foundational to his mentality and awareness
of other possibilities. Someone born in to slavery would likely not have the
swagger and security that comes with being taught to see yourself as a
significant person in the world at an early age.
* https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/5/17/17352238/zora-neale-hurstonbarracoon-review
Eudell, Demetrius. “’Come on Kid, Let’s go Get the Thing’: The Sociogenic
Principle and the Being of Being Black/ Human.” In Sylvia Wynter:
On Being Human as Praxis. Ed. Katherine McKittrick, Duke
University Press, 2015. 226-248.