Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa?

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, is an autobiography of a former slave in the eighteenth century. This narrative was first published in London in March 1789 and immediately became a bestseller. The book was sold by subscription, requiring the buyers to pay half the price of the book in advance. It is still widely read in literature classes all over the world today. The narrative is about a young boy who was kidnapped from his home in Eboe land, what is now present day Nigeria, and shipped to the West Indies and America where he endured the horrors of slavery. He managed to buy his freedom and be an advocate for the abolition of the appalling slave trade. That is the story of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa as narrated by himself.

Vincent Carretta, a professor in the Department of English at University of Maryland, College Park, writes a paper that raises the issue of identity of this former slave. Is Olaudah Equiano an identity revealed? Or an identity assumed? Carretta claims that recently discovered documents concerning the baptism of Gustavus Vassa and his subsequent employment in the British navy "cast doubt" on the early life of Olaudah Equiano. The two documents in question are his baptismal record at St. Margaret's Church in London and the muster records from the Arctic expedition of Sir John Phipps in 1773, both of which attest to his birth in South Carolina. The inconsistency in the two documents is that the baptism record suggests a birth date in 1747 while the Arctic list indicates a birth date in 1745. So which one of the documents is correct? Carretta does a fantastic job of casting his web of doubt even broader, suggesting that Vassa/Equiano was born in 1747, and not in 1745 as claimed in The Interesting Narrative.

According to Carretta, the recent discoveries suggest that "the author of The Interesting Narrative may have invented, rather than reclaimed an African identity". Carretta wants us to believe that Vassa contrived an account of his early life because he was a smart, creative, clever political and intellectual activist. Carretta thinks Vassa was a creative author whose main motivation in writing the text was to use it as a tool in the slavery abolition movement. I find it suspicious though that Equiano's autobiography was published in March 1789, a time that abolition of slavery was a hot topic. This impeccable timing arouses my curiosity and I have to wonder if it was coincidental or just purely intentional.

In my opinion, think the paper critically analyzes the narrative itself and available data and conclusively draws assumptions about the author's life. Carretta conducts an extensive research into Equiano's life and looks for external evidence to verify the information provided in the autobiography. Most of what Equiano wrote turns out to be true. To quote Carretta, "Since my research has shown him to be remarkably accurate whenever his information can be tested by external evidence, his mistakes and omissions become all the more fascinating." Case in point is when Equiano states that his close friend Dr. Irving died from eating poisonous fish in Jamaica while in fact the doctor was well and alive at that time, and actually died twelve years after the first publication of his narrative. So what gives?

The paper does not in any way contradict the critical record, but it is in fact an analysis of Equiano's life from what he himself wrote. Carretta only interprets it from his own point of understanding. The paper focuses on two documents that suggest a South Carolina birth place and inconsistencies in Vassa's own account raise sufficient grounds for reasonable doubt about his claim to have been born in Africa. I do have to admit that before reading Carretta's paper, I had no doubt in my mind that Equiano was really an African. However, Carretta managed to put question marks in my head by bringing up relevant arguments.

The paper is well researched and manages to cast reasonable doubt to readers. It appears that Carretta has a good case, much