The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African

The “Black Atlantic” is the idea that Black identity in Western culture is shaped by travel, connections, and exchanges between countries bordering the Atlantic; Paul Gilroy articulates this idea in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (1992), noting that this movement is central to how Black people like Equiano fashioned a modern identity for themselves in a world that saw them as eternal outsiders on the margins of Western history. In The Interesting Narrative, Equiano’s identities as a cultural observer and participant in events of note allow him to represent an identity that gives him authority to speak to readers not inclined to see him as authoritative because of his racial identity.

While The Interesting Narrative is certainly a slave narrative, it is also a travel narrative that paints a picture of Equiano as a cultural observer who is able to present strange worlds to his Western readers. Through his vivid descriptions, Equiano interprets the landscapes of the Igbo (located in what is today Nigeria), the Middle Passage, England, the Caribbean, the North Pole, the United States, and South America. Readers of the period would have been familiar with tales of conquest and adventures in the Americas, but they also would have associated such free movement with whiteness.