According to his famous autobiography, written in 1789, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-1797) was born in what is now Nigeria. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in childhood, he was taken as a slave into the New World. As a slave to a captain in the Royal Navy, and later a Quaker merchant, he eventually earned the price of his own freedom by careful trading and saving. Coming to London, he became involved in the movement to abolish the slave trade, an involvement which led to him writing and publishing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African, a strongly abolitionist autobiography.

Equiano's autobiography is remarkable in the account he gives of his African days because his re-creation is a mix of primitive idealism and realistic detail, in which he never expresses shame or inferiority regarding his African heritage. Africa is an Eden-like place whose inhabitants follow their own cultural traditions, religious practices, and pastoral pursuits. Although Africa is a happy childhood land for Equiano, he is not blind to the evil events that lately have

For people in Africa, Equiano's narrative is very important because it is the anchor of African studies. In every discipline, from historians to literary scholars, one must begin with Equiano. Equiano makes it impossible for you to forget the issue of slavery. He provides a detailed example of what our ancestors went through, many of which not as lucky as Equiano. Equiano's story, more than any other story, carries that authenticity, that spark and that necessity to connect, to not forget, to remember, and to take responsibility for the actions of our forefathers.

Equiano's great autobiography is strong enough that it even has influenced several popular schools of personal writing current in the eighteenth-century Western world. For instance, the secular stories that display a hardworking youth's rise from rags-to-riches in the commercial world can be seen quite well in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Equiano, like Franklin, is an enterprising young man rising up in life and playing numerous roles that help to develop his character in a free world of possibility. Both Equiano and Franklin use self-ironic humor to depict the

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