Reading the Narrative: literature, fact and fiction

Two chapters in Korieh (2009) address how to read the book. Elizabeth Onogwu argues that it is a hybrid of fact, craft and political argument: the point of view shifts between first-person witness and an editorial voice; the language turns people into “cargoes” and “parcels” to expose the logic of the slave trade; and the selection of events (Equiano says his adventures were “considerably abridged”) serves an abolitionist purpose, including an economic case that Africa could be a market for British goods.

Ron Milland describes how Equiano acted as his own editor and used devices to authenticate his story: a dignified frontispiece portrait, testimonial letters added in later editions and a detailed opening chapter on Eboe life. He argues that even if Equiano had adapted his origin for polemical reasons, the artistry and the argument remain.

Ogbo Ugwuanyi reads Equiano as an early voice against what he calls the “epistemology of racism”, the habit of starting from a supposed difference between peoples. He notes that Equiano argued that skin colour followed climate, that Europeans had once been “barbarous”, and that slavery corrupts the slaveholder.

Two lessons follow for readers. First, the Narrative is a source to be read critically, like any autobiography. Second, in a book with thousands of details about a society that left no written records of its own, Equiano remains one of the few eighteenth-century voices who speak from inside it.