Updates? He writes that he was then sold to Europeans, who forced him to endure the transatlantic Middle Passage from Africa to the West Indies. 1. At the turn of the 21st century, the scholar Vincent Carretta discovered documents that, he argued, suggested Equiano may have been born in North America, and he raised questions about whether Equianos accounts of Africa and the Middle Passage were based on memory, reading, or a combination of the two. This was the goal of the first abolitionist movement, a movement originating largely with Quakers that was adopted and secularized by a combination of evangelical and more secular writers in the 1780s and that found its institutional centers of gravity in the largely white Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in 1787, and in the Sons of Africa, a society of free persons of African descent in Great Britain in which Equiano had a leadership role. In addition to his work as an abolitionist, Equiano was also a pioneering explorer. "Equianos Influence and Narrative." His research interests are in African history and the history of Africans in the Atlantic World. Sign up for our newsletter: Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa (b. Once, a Creole man, who worked as a servant in Montserrat, told. Required fields are marked *. Refine any search. The relevance and meaning of these documents have been disputed, and some scholars have also argued that The Interesting Narrative is like any other autobiography in its complex relationship to its authors memory and knowledge. The fact that Equiano was owned largely by benevolent men assures him of God's presence. These experiences thus affirmed Equianos faith in his attempted conversion of the indian prince in their journey to his home and then the cementing of his past nations culture in which the Musquito tribe resembled. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. Summary of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or At one point, in the start of his career as a freeman, he is applied to as a parson for a funeral for a young black child,[10] later learning the French horn,[11] and then also becoming trained in hairdressing. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. [3] Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 151. [12] Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 166.