The Interesting Narrative

Figure 2.2: A title page image from a 1793 version of Equiano's Interesting Narrative.

In particular, educators could focus on Equiano's lifestyle as a sailor, the epitome of an Atlantic creole activity. To begin with, to get students familiar with his movements, an activity could ask students to read The Interesting Narrative and then to trace Equiano's movements on a map.

The result will be multiple lines of travel crossing and converging in the Atlantic. For additional material on his movements as a sailor, see W. Je rey Bolster's Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (1997).

Bolster explores the Age of Sail and argues that, Before 1865 seafaring had been crucial to blacks' economic survival, liberation strategies, liberation strategies, and collective identity formation (6). At this point educators can stress how black seamen were often seen by U.S. southerners as agents of radicalism.

For example, South Carolina passed a law in the early 1800s requiring the imprisonment of any black seamen arriving at her ports. This begs the question, what elements of radicalism exist within The Interesting Narrative? When discussing Equiano's radicalism, it is useful to reference the entire text, but the early pages are particularly interesting as he states, Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its re and every noble sentiment?

Undoubtedly, Equiano associated with anti-slavery and abolitionist individuals in England and this in uence appears within his writings. He even mentions that numerous friends have pressured him to write his life story, presumably a few of these persons were involved in reform movements. As such, an exercise could require students to read The Interesting Narrative searching, in particular, for `typical' anti-slavery imagery? The `typical' nature of such imagery could be demonstrated through a comparative reading of a few of the slave narratives that would appear in later years, such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1999 ed.).

Also, please view the following modules: Gender and Anti-Slavery in the Atlantic World3 and Slavery, Resistance, and Rebellion Across the Americas4. This broader discussion of reform movements could extend the discussion of Equiano and his writings from the 1780s into the antebellum period or even the Crisis of the Union lectures of the 1850s/1860s. After an exploration of the term creole an educator could also ask their students to explain how The Interesting Narrative is a creole text.