Gustavus Vassa's The Interesting Narrative And Other Writings

Today the subject of slavery is taught in American schools as a tremendously important aspect of history. However, the topic is taught in the broadest sense, only expanding students’ knowledge as far as that slavery was, an inhumane method of free labor, abolished as a result of the Civil War, and is remembered today as the nation’s greatest shame. Olaudah Equiano, otherwise known as Gustavus Vassa’s, memoir The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings further expands readers’ knowledge on the topic of slavery, by describing the brutalities and adversities the author witnessed and experienced as a slave. What is unique about Equiano’s narrative is that because his account provides a personal view into the life of an actual African slave, his …show more content…
As a result of the infrequency of Africans who could read and write during this time period, Equiano’s book is identified today as one of the most important archives of African American history. The book begins in a rather unusual way, with a preface, written by Equiano to acknowledge the legitimacy of his story which had been of inaccuracy’s regarding his life. Equiano supports himself by providing letters written by various people who knew him during his initial arrival in England which helps justify the accuracy of the …show more content…
Although a large portion of the book consists of the authors multiple attempts to pay for his freedom, the written segments of his life as a freeman are equally as important. What is astonishing is that the narrative insists that the life of a freeman differed only slightly from that of a slave. The author claims that the world was not necessarily a better place for freeman and even goes as far as arguing that being a free African was equally as dismal. Equiano acknowledges how the life of a slave was no better than that of a freeman by stating that “I had thought only slavery dreadful; but the state of a free negro appeared to me now equally so at least, and in some respects even worse, for they live in constant alarm for their liberty, which is but nominal, for they are universally insulted and plundered without the possibility of redress” (Equiano 122). Here the author states that freeman are caught between a mindset of freedom and slavery. The author had been a slave since the age of eleven, which meant that in order to adjust to a new life as a freeman, he had to learn to work for a living while constantly absorbing the abuses of living in an oppressed