While young children, he and his sister were seized by kidnappers and sold to slave traders. He was born in the Eboe province of Africa, and provides cultural detail on those people. But from Equiano’s point of view it is an individual story of triumph, which might allow other people like him to follow in his path.Equiano begins his first-person narrative by including several letters that attest to both the veracity of his text and his good character. A modern reader may find Equiano’s path here self-defeating or upsetting, as he embraces the terms of the very society that enslaved him. He does this in part in order to prove to his prejudiced readers that an African man can complete this path. He’s no longer even just a reader, but also a writer, able to trace his own path of education. By writing his autobiography, Equiano emphasizes that he has completed the civilizing process, and can now be fully accepted as a rational, enlightened European subject himself. He seeks to “imbibe” and “imitate” the Europeans through a long process of education that is meant to make him into one of the “civilized” subjects, despite the fact that these “civilized” subjects have enslaved and subjugated him. Throughout the book Equiano shows a deep desire to gain access to European culture and customs. But the autobiography also captures his growth into a supremely skilled seaman. At some points, indeed, the narrative seems to portray Equiano’s earlier self as humorously untutored: he thinks that ships run thanks to magic forces, or that compasses have a life of their own. Equiano’s own life illustrates his point. Instead, he argues that Africans may be “uncivilized” but they can become “civilized,” if only they’re given the opportunity. Equiano thus does not critique the basis of the European distinction between their own “civilized” society and “barbaric” African culture. Nonetheless, even while Equiano argues that Africans, like Europeans, have complex culture, he also seems to agree with European stereotypes about African “backwardness.” Equiano argues that Africans are no less intelligent than Europeans-they simply haven’t been educated in the same way. By doing so, Equiano attempts to provide a familiar context within which a European reader could understand African customs: the Jews were then a group within England that maintained its own customs, but was still relatively assimilated to the majority culture. At a number of points, Equiano describes his home village by comparing his native customs to Jewish customs. Equiano thus makes a case for the vibrant cultural life of African peoples, which Europeans at the time tended to belittle. In telling the story of his life from his childhood to the present day, Olaudah Equiano seeks to acquaint his British readers with the richness of life in his African home by detailing the dances, rites, and other social customs of his village.
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