1. Olaudah Equiano AP Lang Lecture SMIC

2. Miniature Biography  Olaudah Equiano  Nationality: African Lifespan: c. 1745 – 1797  Kidnapped at 11 & brought to Barbados  Of note: after buying his freedom, he finally settled in England.  Famous Book – The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

3. Author’s name included somewhere in the title, the phrase “as written by him/herself,” and an identification of the author as a slave or African

4. Olaudah Equiano  Equiano’s autobiography is one of the first slave narratives by a black African to be published.  Slave autobiography and abolitionist literature begins with this narrative.  The specific reason these texts were written was to bring about political change.

5. Three Part Structure of the Slave Narrative  Enslavement  Escape  Freedom

6. Evaluate Autobiographies  What personal information does the author give that a biographer would probably not be able to give?  How reliable do you think autobiographies are?  On the other hand, what can autobiographies, such as Equiano’s, tell us that other historical documents cannot?

7. Activity  From what point of view is this selection written? Why might that have been startling to European readers?  Find an example of “loaded language.” [your book calls this “sensory details.”]  Find an example of archaic language. I challenge you: Don’t use the footnotes!  List anecdotes he uses.  Find an example of irony.  Find an example of passages that help you make inferences about his beliefs?  Compare Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative to Equiano’s slave narrative.