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| Library status: currently open during regularly scheduled hours. |
An African's Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797 by
The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a prominent African in late 18th-century Britain, is quoted, anthologized and interpreted in dozens of books and articles. More than any single contemporary, Equiano speaks for the fate of millions of Africans in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. This study attempts to create a rounded portrait of the man behind the literary image, and to study Equiano in the context of Atlantic slavery.
Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic by
In an interdisciplinary study of black intellectual history at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Stefan M. Wheelock shows how black antislavery writers were able to counteract ideologies of white supremacy while fostering a sense of racial community and identity. The major figures he discusses--Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, and Maria Stewart--engaged the concepts of democracy, freedom, and equality as these ideas ripened within the context of racial terror and colonial hegemony. Wheelock highlights the ways in which religious and secular versions of collective political destiny both competed and cooperated to forge a vision for a more perfect and just society. By appealing to religious sensibilities and calling for emancipation, these writers addressed slavery and its cultural bearing on the Atlantic in varied, complex, and sometimes contradictory ways during a key period in the development of Western political identity and modernity.
Genius in Bondage by
Until fairly recently, critical studies and anthologies of African American literature generally began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s. Genius in Bondage situates this literature in its own historical terms, rather than treating it as a sort of prologue to later African American writings. The contributors address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore how black identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian religion and the Enlightenment on definitions of freedom and liberty, and identify ways in which black literature both engaged with and rebelled against Anglo-American culture.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself was the first work that began the nineteenth-century genre of slave narrative autobiographies. Written and published by Equiano, a former slave, it became a prototype for those that followed.Kidnapped in Africa as a child, Equiano was transported to the Caribbean and then to Virginia, bought by a Quaker shipowner, and placed in service at sea. Aboard various American and British ships, he sailed throughout the world, and he continued to do so after having purchased his freedom in 1766. Once settled in London, he fought tirelessly to end slavery, and his Interesting Narrative was placed on members' desks in the Houses of Parliament.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, details its writer's life in slavery, his time spent serving on galleys, the eventual attainment of his own freedom and later success in business. Including a look at how slavery stood in West Africa, the book received favorable reviews and was one of the first slave narratives to be read widely.
Teaching Olaudah Equiano's Narrative: Pedagogical Strategies and New Perspectives by
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789) is one of the most frequently and heatedly discussed texts in the canon of eighteenth-century transatlantic literature written in English. Equiano's Narrative contains an engrossing account of the author's experiences in Africa, the Americas, and Europe as he sought freedom from bondage and became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement. While scholars have approached this sophisticated work from diverse critical and historical/biographical perspectives, there has been, until now, little written about the ways in which it can be successfully taught in the twenty-first-century classroom. In this collection of essays, most of them never before published, sixteen teacher-scholars focus explicitly on the various classroom contexts in which the Narrative can be assigned and various pedagogical strategies that can be used to help students understand the text and its complex cultural, intellectual, literary, and historical implications. The contributors explore topics ranging from the religious dimensions of Equiano's rhetoric and controversies about his origins, specifically whether he was actually born in Africa and endured the Middle Passage, to considerations of the Narrative's place in American Literature survey courses and how it can be productively compared to other texts, including captivity narratives and modern works of fiction. They not only suggest an array of innovative teaching models but also offer new readings of the work that have been overlooked in Equiano studies and Slavery studies. With these two dimensions, this volume will help ensure that conversations over Equiano's eighteenth-century autobiography remain relevant and engaging to today's students. ERIC D. LAMORE is an assistant professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. A contributor to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, he is also the coeditor, with John C. Shields, of New Essays on Phillis Wheatley.