DNF at 13 percent.

I feel bad for not finishing this, but this whole book has been a struggle, which is why it sat on my currently reading shelf for months.

The book is a stream of consciousness writing by Olaudah Equiano. Mr. Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa was a prominent African living in London. He was a freed slave that supported the British movement to end the slave trade. This autobiography is considered to be one of the main reasons that the the Slave Trade Act of 1807 ended up being favored by many.

I feel terrible that I could not get into this book considering this is listed everywhere as a must read book for African Americans.

I just really could not get into the writing. I mean this was first published in 1789 and the wording and style of writing took a bit to get into. But at this point, the autobiography has no flow to it. There is just regurgitation of information being thrown at the reader and I can't take it anymore. ( )

By his own account, former slave Olaudah Equiano (known in life by the slave name Gustavus Vassa; born c. 1745) was an exemplary success. Kidnapped from his native West Africa as an eleven-year-old, he endured the horrific Middle Passage. He made himself indispensable to several owners, until he was finally able to purchase his own freedom in 1766. Blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit and an unshakable belief that he was especially favored by God, Olaudah navigated several layers of society in the West Indies and England, and even sailed to Greenland as part of an Arctic expedition. During one period of his life, he was even involved in the slave trade, but eventually he became known as an early abolitionist. He married a British woman and had two children with her before passing away in 1797.

The Interesting Narrative is, well, interesting as a historical document, but I have to admit I found Olaudah rather insufferable. I found this passage, from Chapter 9, remarkable (it also gives an idea of Olaudah's writing style): "With a light heart I bade Montserrat farewell, and never had my feet on it since; and with it I bade adieu to the sound of the cruel whip, and all other dreadful instruments of torture; adieu to the offensive sight of the violated chastity of the sable females, which has too often accosted my eyes; adieu to oppressions (although to me less severe than most of my countrymen); and adieu to the angry howling, dashing surfs. I wished for a grateful and thankful heart to praise the Lord God on high for all his mercies!" As long as he doesn't have to see bad things happening, he's ok about it.

I don't recommend this book to the casual reader. ( )

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first published in 1789 in London, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. The narrative is argued to represent a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel narrative, and spiritual narrative. The book describes Equiano's time spent in enslavement, and documents his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his own freedom and in business thereafter.

This is a remarkable book written by a very intelligent man who was cast into slavery. It was reportedly a major influence in the anti-slavery movement. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1834848.html

This is the autobiography of an 18th-century slave, sold from his home in West Africa as a child to work on the West Indian fleet and around the Anglophone Atlantic shores, before becoming a freeman, missionary and political activist. It's an absolutely riveting first-hand account, not only for the awful conditions of slavery (and indeed for freed blacks) in the British empire of the day, but also because of Equiano's unabashed enthusiasm for naval combat (reminiscent of Patrick O'Brian, with the important difference that Equiano was actually there) and his conversion to a fairly open-minded but pious evangelical Christianity. I see that some recent scholars have been trying to assert that Equiano was actually born in South Carolina, but I find his narrative of Africa and the Middle Passage completely compelling, and he comes across as a completely honest witness even if sometimes a bit scatty on long-ago detail.

One point that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is that as far as I can tell, Equiano was one of the first people to use the phrase "human rights". Wikipedia thinks that "The term human rights probably came into use some time between Paine's The Rights of Man [1791] and William Lloyd Garrison's 1831 writings in The Liberator", but Equiano's Interesting Narrative is published in 1789, the year that the French National Assembly passed its Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen and two years before Paine. He uses the phrase twice, both times in descriptions of slavers brutally breaking family ties, rather than in talking of any of the other numerous abuses he witnessed.

Anyway, this is an amazing book whose title rather under-sells it to a modern audience. ( )