Olaudah equiano autobiography excerpt

Interesting Narrative chronicles the life of Olaudah Equiano: his childhood in a West African village; his life as a slave first in Africa and then the New World; his work as a seaman on a British warship, a role that enabled him to earn enough money to purchase his freedom; and, finally, his role as leader of free blacks residing in England.

Although some scholars have recently cast doubt on the truth of the stories that Equiano recorded, Interesting Narrative nevertheless provides a plausible picture of Africa, slavery, and the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth-century, and the book (which went through thirteen editions in thirty years)had an impact on Western culture and on the emerging abolitionist movement.

The following excerpts focus on the moment when Equiano and his sister were kidnapped and brought into slavery, on his life as a slave in Africa, and on his experience of the "middle passage" to the New World.

Chapter 2

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