Equiano's Narrative
My reading of Equiano's narrative has been interesting, but there are a lot of really sad parts in it. For example, one part that was really sad to read was about how Equiano was separated from his sister. I can't even imagine how hard it must have been for slaves to be separated from their families. It was also really sad how Equiano was sold multiple times and passed to different owners, which is pretty dehumanizing as he was treated like property. One thing from the reading that was unexpected was that the people in Africa actually had slaves of their own (but they were not treated as badly). I never learned about this before because my education has mostly focused on slaves in the United States and also did not really focus on the traveling of slaves as much as this narrative does.
It was also interesting to see what life was like in Africa as Equiano describes it in the first chapter like how they built their own houses out of natural materials, the importance of the color blue, meanings of names, and how priests served as doctors as well. I do not really know much about the culture in Africa, so this interested me a lot.
I thought that the narrative could be difficult to follow along at some points. I felt that there were a lot of different owners that Equiano moved to, so it was challenging to keep track of all of them at least for me. It also seems like there are a lot of events happening in such few pages, which can make it difficult to keep track of everything.
It was definitely compelling to learn about the contrast between the treatment of slaves in Africa versus in the Americas. Owning people on all accounts could never be justified, but the differences certainly warrant discussion about power complexes and culture in both regions.
ReplyDeleteHey Kiana, I totally agree with you on the difficulty of this read -- in my opinion this is one of the toughest texts we've read in this class so far. Reading about the poor treatment Equiano was subjected to and how he had no sense of community was awful.
ReplyDeleteThis read is also difficult for me because it is tragic, and I often had to take breaks
ReplyDeleteYes I empathize with you. I wonder what the reception of his book was in parliament. Equiano's powerful ability to make us feel these emotions must have inspired a change in how members of parliament (or any of his audience) saw the world.
DeleteI agree with being taken aback from the horrendous scenes in the book. I think it is very important to read though. Some of the descriptions of Africa and the treatment of Africans reminds me of my Difficult Dialogues class I took last quarter which had similar themes to this novel.
ReplyDeleteI was also interested in learning about the African culture he elaborated on in the first chapter because, like you, I didn't know much about it coming into this..
ReplyDeleteIt would be great for all of you to keep track of the questions you have about African (or, really, Igbo--since Africa is an enormous continent filled with so many different countries and cultures) culture for possible research excursion research topics.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that the narrative was difficult to follow at times more due to the time it was written in, or more due to Equiano not being the best writer?
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