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Biography of Olaudah Equiano
Biography of Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) was kidnapped
from his African village at the age of eleven, shipped through the
arduous "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic Ocean, seasoned in the West
Indies and sold to a Virginia planter. He was later bought by a
British naval Officer, Captain Pascal, as a present for his cousins in
London. After ten years of enslavement throughout the North American
continent, where he assisted his merchant slave master and worked as a
seaman, Equiano bought his freedom. At the age of forty four he wrote
and published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Written by
Himself, which he registered at Stationer's Hall, London, in 1789.
More than two centuries later, this work is recognized not only as one
of the first works written in English by a former slave, but perhaps
more important as the paradigm of the slave narrative, a new literary
genre.

Equiano recalls his childhood in Essaka (an Igbo village formerly in
northeast Nigeria), where he was adorned in the tradition of the
"greatest warriors." He is unique in his recollection of traditional
African life before the advent of the European slave trade. Equally
significant is Equiano's life on the high seas, which included not
only travels throughout the Americas, Turkey and the Mediterranean;
but also participation in major naval battles during the French and
Indian War (Seven Years' War), as well as in the search for a
northwest passage led by the Phipps expedition of 1772-1773. Equiano
also records his central role, along with Granville Sharpe, in the
British Abolishionist Movement. As a major voice in this movement,
Equiano petitioned the Queen of England in 1788. He was appointed to
the expedition to settle London's poor Blacks in Sierra Leone, a
British colony on the west coast of Africa. Sadly, he did not...