Post 5

Option A:

A slave narrative is defined as a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved Africans in Great Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada, and Caribbean nations[1]. For this post, I chose to further respond to our discussion of Equiano's Narrative to be under the genre of a narrative of slavery. I do to this because I felt that the analyzing this genre allows us to understand the influences that shape his narrative and offer him a unique perspective. Within the novel, there are several key points within the reading that indicate the slavery is a bit portion of what makes up this narrative as a whole. When I did some background research, I found that Equiano was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery where he served captains of slave ships and other vessels as well. In the early pages of the narrative, the story does not truly start to evolve until after Equiano is kidnapped. He describes a long voyage and the back and forth nature of traders bringing and exchanging him "sometimes by land, sometimes by water, through different countries..." (pg. 69) He even begins to take a liking to his master and wants to "imitate" the English culture that he is immersed in, which is an interesting perspective for one to have of their captors (for a more complete summary, in case you have not finished the novel, see footnote[2]). I am inclined to think that since he was captured at a young age, his self-image become skewed causing him to think that he was defective and that was the reason for his misfortune.

[1] “Slave Narrative.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Mar. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_narrative.

[2] Link here: https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/summary.html