Few figures of the eighteenth century have captured the attention of historians, literary critics, and scholars of Africana studies as much as Olaudah Equiano. One of the most prominent anti-slavery voices of his time, Equiano’s autobiography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano not only yields insight into the author’s extraordinary life, but functions as a powerful polemic against one of history’s most sordid episodes, the practice of chattel slavery in the Americas. Countless authors have explored Equiano’s account from different vantage points, yet Vincent Carretta’s Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (UGA Press, 2022) remains novel. Significantly, the author avers that discourses revolving around Equiano’s likely misrepresentation of his African birth too often miss the point. Impassioned debates about the account’s historical veracity obscure the ex-slave’s motivations for distorting his childhood origins. As Carretta explains, “manumission necessitated redefinition” (p. xix). Individuals who escaped bondage were constantly engaged in an effort to redefine themselves in landscapes routinely marginalizing Blackness. Largely known as Gustavas Vassa before his famed account, Equiano’s choice to represent himself as African-born cannot be extricated from debates occurring in the societies that he was attempting to transform. Carretta convincingly casts his subject and fellow narrator as a skilled rhetorician responding to the abolitionist movement’s yelp for an authentic African voice which could delineate the social organization of African society along with the horrors wrought by the slave trade. While Carretta is firmly of the opinion that Equiano was born in South Carolina, as historical evidence suggests, he refrains from suggesting that the anti-slavery crusader trafficked in deception. Rather, Equiano seized upon his skill as a writer, vast amount of maritime experience in the Americas and Europe, and engagement with people from myriad backgrounds to craft a narrative that spoke to the plight of countless other degraded human beings whose voices are lost to us. The success that eventually greeted The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is a testament to Olaudah’s propensity for self-promotion and re-invention.
A highly prolific writer, Vincent Carretta is no stranger to composing biographies on esteemed eighteenth-century Black figures. Some of his previous works include The Life and Letters of Philip Quaque The First African Anglican Missionary (2010) and Phillis Wheatley’s Biography of a Genius in Bondage (2011). Given his experience with chronicling the lives of extraordinary men and women, Carretta’s Equiano, the African successfully alternates between allowing the tenor of Equiano’s text to emerge through quoting passages from The Interesting Narrative and Equiano’s other writings while also displaying Carretta’s complex grasp of historical processes and historiographical debates revolving around the subject of abolition. At times, his work can overwhelm given its sheer volume of detail. Nevertheless, to the biographer’s credit, neither his voice nor Equiano’s become swallowed.