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September 19, 2005 latimes.com
STYLE & CULTURE
Scholar raises questions over slave narrative's facts
From Associated Press
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Olaudah Equiano wrote with vivid detail of life as human
cargo — the
foul smells aboard the slave ship that brought him from West Africa to the New
World in
the 18th century, the anguished cries of women, the despair of those headed to a
life of
bondage.
The bestselling autobiography he later published is now a key text for scholars
studying
slavery and its roots in Africa, one of the few first-person accounts by a slave
of the
brutal cross-Atlantic trip known as the Middle Passage.
But part of Equiano's tale may be more fiction than fact.
A forthcoming biography of Equiano by English professor Vincent Carretta of the
University of Maryland, College Park, contends that Equiano was actually born in
South
Carolina and could never have made the trip he describes.
By challenging the authenticity of a major voice in the history of African
slavery and
one of the most widely taught slave narratives, Carretta's work, titled "Equiano,
the
African: Biography of a Self-Made Man," has stirred a furor among some
historians and
literary scholars.
"I think 'devastating' is not underestimating some people's reaction to this
notion,"
said Philip Morgan, a Princeton University history professor.
Carretta's book, published by University of Georgia Press, will be released Oct.
24.
Equiano published his life story in London in 1789. At the time, the
abolitionist
movement was growing, and his story of the horrific voyage on a slave ship was
valuable
evidence for abolitionists trying to prove the slave trade was inhuman. It
eventually
went through nine editions and made Equiano a wealthy man.
In the book, Equiano chronicles his remarkable life, which includes serving in
the
British Navy, buying his freedom in the West Indies, his marriage to a white
British
woman and his opposition to slavery. He says he was born in 1745 in present-day
southeast
Nigeria and was taken captive by slavers at age 11.
Fascinated with the story, Carretta began work on an updated edition of
Equiano's
autobiography. He closely examined Equiano's facts. Most of them checked out.
But when he
looked at Equiano's 1759 baptismal records from a London church, the birthplace
listed
was South Carolina. Carretta later uncovered a ship's muster from 1773 that also
said he
was born in South Carolina.
Adam Potkay, an English professor at the College of William and Mary who has
written
about Equiano's narrative, said Carretta's archival work doesn't reduce the
text's value.
"It may lessen the claims to historical veracity," he said. "But it does not
lessen its
persuasive power."