Supporting quotes from Vincent Carretta

Was Equiano ‘a man of the Atlantic’?

•          Was he African?

•          Was he British?

•          Was he American?

His biographer, Vincent Carretta, calls him ‘a man of the Atlantic’.

•          ‘Equiano was certainly African by descent’. (Carretta, Equiano the African)

•          ‘He spent as much of his time on the water as in any place on land.’ (Vincent Carretta, Equiano the African: biography of a self-made man (Athens, Georgia, 2005))

•          ‘He defined himself as much by movement as by place’.

•          He constructed an identity for himself.

•          ‘Even retention of a slave name was a choice.’

•          With freedom came the obligation to forge a new identity, whether by creating one out of the personal qualities at hand or by counterfeiting one. Equiano may have done both’. (Carretta, Equiano the African, xix)

Was he African?

For the rest of his life he used the name Gustavus Vassa.

                “Except for its appearance on the title page, the name Olaudah Equiano was never used by the author of The interesting narrative in either public or private written communication.  Whether in print, unpublished correspondence, or in his will, he always identified himself as Gustavus Vassa.’ (Vincent Carretta (ed.), Olaudah Equiano: The interesting narrative and other writings, note 131.)

But, when he published his autobiography in 1789, he identified himself as ‘Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African’.He knew that his readers would ‘assess him not just as an individual but as the representative of his race, as a type as well as a person.’ (Carretta)He consciously took on an African identity.

Was he British?

‘Equiano periodically reminds readers of his narrative that he exists on the boundary between African and British identities: ‘From the various scenes I beheld on ship-board, I soon grew a stranger to terror of every kind, and was, in that respect, at least, almost an Englishman.’ (Carretta, Equiano the African, 292)

Was he American?

Equiano’s baptism certificate (London, 1759) indicates that he was born ‘in Carolina’, in about 1747. This certificate, combined with evidence from British shipping records suggests that he arrived in England from Virginia in December 1754, aboard the Industrious Bee, when he was 7 years old. (see Carretta, The interesting narrative, note 143)

‘In the surviving musters for this voyage …the name Vassa does not appear; however there is a Gustavus Weston on the musters.  He joined the expedition on 17 May and is identified as an able seaman, aged 28, born in South Carolina.’(Vincent Carretta (ed.), Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative and other writings, note 486)

Carretta’s personal view

‘More surprisingly, his baptismal record in 1759 and naval records from his Arctic voyage in 1773 suggest that he may well have been born in South Carolina, not Africa.  External contradictions are especially intriguing because Equiano’s account of his life is generally remarkably verifiable when tested against documentary and historical evidence, so much so that deviations from the truth seem more likely to have been the result of artistic premeditation than absentmindedness.  From the available evidence, one could argue that the author of The Interesting Narrative invented an African identity rather than reclaimed one.  If so, Equiano’s literary achievements have been underestimated.’ (Caretta (ed.), The interesting narrative, xi)

Would Equiano have invented an African identity?

‘Why might Equiano have invented an African nativity and disguised an American birth?  Before 1789 the abundant evidence and many arguments against the transatlantic slave trade came from white voices alone. …. Equiano appreciated that … an African, not an African American voice was what the abolitionist cause required.  He gave a voice to millions of people forcibly taken from Africa and brought to the Americas as slaves.’ (Carretta, Equiano the African, xvii)

‘Given the number and variety of his sources, we may reasonably ask whether Equiano was experiencing recovered memory or the power of suggestion as he constructed his autobiography.’ (Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African: biography of a self-made man University of Georgia Press, 2005, 7)

‘In one sense, the world lay all before the former slave, who as property had been a person without a country or a legal personal identity.  Equiano’s restlessness and apparent wanderlust once he was free may have been the result of his quest for an identity and a place in the world.’ (Carretta. Equiano the African, xix)

‘Created or revealed, the various overlapping identities the author displays in The interesting narrative should warn us not to try to limit him to one nationality.  A self-described ‘citizen of the world’, Equiano was an ‘Atlantic creole’ who throughout his life maintained an allegiance to the Africa of his ancestors.  He speaks as powerfully now as he first did more than two centuries ago.’ (Carretta, Equiano the African, xix)