Equiano The African: File This One Under ??? WTF ???

If you don't know the story of Olaudah Equiano/Gustavas Vassa The African, this is as good a place as any to start. An excerpt:

Olaudah Equiano[o-lah-oo-day ek-wee-ah-no], called Gustavus Vassa by his white masters, became a legend through his words. In 1788 England published his autobiographical work, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, which set the precedent for anti-slavery literature written by former slaves themselves, which would have a profound impact on the abolition movements in the eighteenth century.

If you've never read his narrative, it is very vivid at times, once you get into the flow of how differently people wrote way back then. And he does things like quote Milton. You can take a look at his narrative here, courtesy of the Hanover Historical Texts Project, which I keep meaning to add to the linkys along the side rail but forget to do moments after the thought passes. Great stuff on that site. Rather skimpy in some sections, though.

In essence, Equiano's work = extremely important keystone to the cannon of slave narratives. We're talking Holocaust studies/Diary of Anne Frank level of importance.

Got it? Okay. Now take a look at this AP Story:

The bestselling autobiography he later published is now a key text for scholars studying slavery and its roots in Africa, one of the few first-person accounts by a slave of the brutal cross-Atlantic trip known as the Middle Passage.

But part of Equiano's tale may be more fiction than fact.

A forthcoming biography of Equiano by English professor Vincent Carretta of the University of Maryland, College Park, contends that Equiano was actually born in South Carolina and could never have made the trip he describes.

??? WTF ???

Zipping around to other stories, it appears Carretta has been putting forth his take on this narrative in academic since at least 1995, but nobody noticed.  Including me, I must admit. I HAVE the edition where he has the South Carolina thing in the footnotes. I THOUGHT IT WAS A TYPO.  Haven't thought about it again until now! Anyways, in essence this is the first I've heard of this controversy and I tend to track stuff under my Geek umbrella fairly closely, even if I do have to dip into academic journals every once in a while to keep up.

Here's a rather boring and sedate interview with Carretta, from The Chronicle of Higher Education. I'll see if I find a better one out there somewhere.

Have no idea if his claims are true. I just now that I. Must. Have. This. Book. NOW.

Interesting that Carretta says in a couple of the stories that the evidence he turned up is not conclusive. But at the same time, he says what he turned up is extremely difficult to discount. (I think academics perfected the art of waffling far before any politician did.)

Random thought ... Carretta has academic black history creds out the wazoo. I have two of his other books. If he did not have those creds - say he had been a professor of rhetoric or literature or something - would he have been able to get this book published? Would his findings have been ignored and marginalized, and himself dismissed as another white revisionist?

Like The Man said - Only Nixon Could Go To China.

That's a very interesting thought to ponder, isn't it?

!!! Agony !!! His book doesn't seem to have hit the Internet(s) store I go to to snag things that technically aren't supposed to be on sale yet. Will just have to wait, then.

I'd panic over these revelations, but happily one of the joys of being a fiction writer is never having to let the actual facts get in the way of what you're doing.

Wow. It's going to be a couple of days before I can properly wrap my head around the idea that Equiano's story might not be true. I'm not sure I can. I gotta get this book.

We will update this important story as it develops.