Journal 18

Nika Bogoslovsky
10/26/07
Equiano

"Equiano writes that he was born in about 1745 in what is now Nigeria... Recent scholarship has questioned these claims, suggesting that Equiano may have been born in the Carolinas."

Summary:

This is a small bit of an autobiography written by Olaudah Equino. He starts out with the brief history of his direct family, where he came from, what happened to his family and how he came to America. He writes about his experiences during the middle passage, his slave days and how he earned his freedom.

Response:

I find it really interesting that Olaudah Equiano's birth is unknown. I know there are many people in history, Christopher Columbus being one of them, who's birthdays are unknown but Equiano's seems like a bigger deal. It's especially interesting because if he was born in the Carolina's, then his writings of the middle passage would be fiction, I don't think that that would decrease the power of his work but it would change history behind him a bit. I believe his work to be true to it's word because it sounds just like what I learned in history class. If his work is fiction, then he didn't know exactly how the middle passage was like but then we would get a sense of how much it was talked about by his peers and how each voyage, assuming they came on different trips, was similar. In addition, being fiction work gives me a sense that he was his peer's voice, which makes his work that much more essential. He was lucky to be educated, so if he was actually born in the Carolina's, then what we're reading is the voice of many, not just one, and that give it more power. If he did actually go through it, then it's a first hand account of what really happened to him and to everyone else on his ship, which would give it that same power; there's just something fascinating if his work is a compilation of other people's experiences. I can't pin point it.