Where was he born? The Isseke debate

In the Narrative Equiano places his birth in “Essaka”, in the Igbo-speaking world. Catherine Acholonu, in Korieh (2009, chapter 2), identifies Essaka with Isseke, in the Ihiala area of present-day Anambra State, in the Orlu cultural area east of the Niger. She points to matching customs (a single supreme God, offerings at harvest, pythons treated as sacred, blue-dyed cotton, the ichi scarification) and to a family name, Ekwealuo, which she reports from Isseke. She also reads his reference to an estate in “Elese” as Ala-Isse, “land of five”.

Several chapters in the same book support an African birth on other grounds. Dorothy Ukaegbu argues that Equiano’s uses of “country” and “nation” match eighteenth-century Igbo clan organization, and that Igbo terms such as embrenche and the details of the ichi make sense only to someone raised in that culture.

The challenge came from Vincent Carretta (Equiano, the African, 2005). He found a baptismal record from St Margaret’s, Westminster, dated 9 February 1759, for a twelve-year-old “Gustavus Vassa” described as born in Carolina, and a 1773 ship’s muster list that also gives the Carolinas. He concluded that Equiano may have invented rather than recovered an African identity.