The descent into slavery is a perspective I have not read before. All the other slave narratives I have read begin with the author already in the thick of it, having been born into it. Not so with Equiano’s story. This is not to say that Equiano had it better than his fellow former-slaves because he didn’t grow up in the disgusting environment that is slavery, or that he had it worse off because he’d had a beautiful taste of freedom before it was unfairly ripped away from him, but rather that it was just another way for my heart to break while reading early African American literature.
I love how his narrative starts by giving the reader details about the culture he grew up in. He doesn’t begin with the day he was kidnapped, but instead paints us a picture of his childhood. We learn he was from an important family, we learn some of his culture’s customs, and I think it’s obvious from the way he speaks of these things with fondness and care that he was very much loved and wanted.
When he begins to speak of his kidnapping, it is very abrupt – right in the middle of a large paragraph, in fact. I imagine that the experience was brutally abrupt, too, an unexpected nightmare that you’d only heard happened to other people. But it didn’t happen to “other people,” it happened to him and his sister, and I can’t even begin imagine what that would’ve felt like. To be taken from everything and everyone you knew and loved, to fear for not only your own life, but also your sister’s, to be lowered from your status of human to sub-human, to have every choice and every freedom stripped away from you.
Sure, I can read about it, sympathize, and try to empathize, but, no…I can’t fully imagine it.
My Thoughts on African American Literature 