It oughta be a movie: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself
The minute I stumbled on this book in my local used bookshop and glanced at the summary, I thought: Someone needs to make a movie of this. I first learned of Equiano as a former slave turned abolitionist activist through the film ‘Amazing Grace’, which tells the story of William Wilberforce’s efforts to outlaw the British slave trade. As Equiano understatedly remarks, “My life and fortune have been extremely chequered, and my adventures various”, including not only being kidnapped as a child in Africa and later writing in support of abolition, but also fighting in several naval battles, buying his own freedom, joining an arctic expedition, working as everything from a hairdresser to a plantation overseer, being shipwrecked, marrying an Englishwoman, applying to be a missionary, and serving as commissary for a venture to resettle freed slaves in Sierra Leone.
It would, however, take a good amount of work to turn this book into a workable script because, despite the title, it was not designed primarily as an ‘interesting narrative’. This book has a very specific purpose: To get white readers to see its author as not just a person they can identify with but a loyal Briton, and to show them the horrors of slavery – but not so vividly or unremittingly that they feel attacked or turn away. It is perhaps that balancing act that is most intriguing to observe today. Each section of the book works to this purpose. Each chapter also has a brief summary at the top about what it contains; modern readers will differ on whether they consider these teasers or spoilers! For instance: Chap.VII.
The Author’s disgust at the West Indies – Forms schemes to obtain his freedom – Ludicrous disappointment he and his captain meet with in Georgia – At last, by several successful voyages, he acquires a sum of money sufficient to purchase it – Applies to his master, who accepts it, and grants his manumission, to his great joy – He afterwards enters as a freeman on board one of Mr. King’s ships, and sails for Georgia – Impositions on free negroes as usual – His venture of turkies – Sails for Montserrat, and, on his passage, his friend, the Captain, falls ill and dies.
It begins with an account of the author’s childhood in Africa: Inland Benin, specifically. Equiano makes comparisons of his people to the Jews of the Old Testament – with things like circumcision, ritual washing, and polygamy being common practices – thus linking his culture to one his readers would find foreign but sympathetic. He notes that slaves in his homeland were mainly distinguished by social interactions (not eating with free folk), but everyone dressed the same and did similar work. This will serve to contrast some of the exceedingly brutal practices of West Indian plantation slavery he describes later. We then get the pathos of his kidnapping and later separation from his sister, whose fate he never learned. Equiano is, to the modern reader, disconcertingly effusive about how nice his masters were. This is to set a contrast to the average and worst sort – there is a whole chapter that is just a catalog of horrors. The argument is: “See how these idiots work against their own interest, when they could instead breed loyalty from kindness? Surely if some of those absentee British landlords knew what was going on, they wouldn’t stand for it. Right, reader-who-might-be-one-of-them?” But he also quietly drops in evidence that those “good and kind” masters were still exploitative. For instance, he is only able to buy his freedom because he requests it in front of his master’s friend who knew of the original promise, making reneging on that promise embarrassing. He also goes out of his way to find the ship’s captain he thought was going to free him in England and who instead sold him back to the West Indies, to show him he earned his freedom anyway! But he also writes of how freedom for a black man isn’t secure in the Americas, with multiple accounts of how he and others had their property stolen, or were arrested or beaten without cause, or even kidnapped or nearly kidnapped back into slavery, with no opportunity for justice. His accounts of his conversion and desire to spread Christianity are an expression of honest faith, but also would be attractive to readers who like the idea of converting the heathen – and might be alarmed about the bad example so many of their countrymen are setting! On the other hand, Equiano only barely mentions or leaves out the parts of his life that might offend his readers: His marriage to a white woman; leading role in the Sons of Africa, a group of black abolitionists in London; and membership in the radical working class London Corresponding Society, which campaigned to extend the vote to non-property-owners! The book was published by subscription, and at the end was included a list of subscribers that also functioned as a petition against the slave trade. This included prominent businessmen like Josiah Wedgewood, female “bluestocking” writers like Elizabeth Montague, other abolitionists including Granville Sharp, and fellow Afro-British writers like Cugoano.
Adaptation Issues:
Besides the complications of starting with a book that has so many dramatic events packed into it, and which definitely doesn’t have a three-act structure, the biggest challenge for adaptation would be the complexities of the author himself. That starts even with his name. I’ve been calling him Olaudah Equiano, the name he’s mostly known by today and which he emphasized in this book, but in life he went by Gustavus Vassa, derived from the name of a Swedish rebel who liberated the country from Denmark and became king - an ironic choice by one of Equiano’s masters. It is unclear if he decided to keep it for the historical reference or simply because he was tired of having other people change his name. This makes coming up with a catchier name for the movie more challenging, as it would be weird to call it simply something like ‘Olaudah’ if that isn’t what he called himself!
More controversially, although he is famous as an abolitionist, Equiano as a free man did not immediately distance himself from the slave economy – working as a sailor on a ship transporting slaves to Georgia, and as the overseer of a plantation in Central America. He probably felt quite conflicted about this: these episodes are relayed unusually briefly, and often with assurances of how he tried to treat his “sable countrymen” well. This is probably true, as far as it goes – He is definitely the sort to refuse to nail the hatches shut during a shipwreck, instead standing there arguing the cruelty and irrationality of this move to the captain! – and he arguably made up for this collaboration with his activism later in life. But he also clearly experiences “double consciousness”. He wants to identify himself as a loyal citizen of Britain, as that is a position that brings status and there are things he admires about England, yet he can’t escape the fact that what everyone – black or white – first sees of him is his color, or the knowledge that his chosen nation is the cause of many of the wrongs he suffered. This would be some really interesting stuff to explore, but doing so while also keeping in most of the exciting events could be a challenge.
Much of the religious conversion stuff would likely have to be cut, as it is a diversion from the main narrative and point. However, this is also a part of the book that challenges the modern reader. It is uncomfortable to hear how Equiano tortured himself with fears of damnation after learning the concept of hell – even though he sounds pretty well behaved for a sailor! He then tries to spread this terrifying religion to others, including a young Amerindian, who asks him: “How comes it that all the white men on board, who can read and write, observe the sun, and know all things, yet swear, lie and get drunk, only excepting yourself? [identifying Equiano as also ‘white’]” This, as well as arguments for how native peoples of Africa and elsewhere would surely become “civilized” and an excellent market for British goods, is weird to read in a post-colonial era. Equiano at times sounds less tolerant of other religions and cultures than the previous subject of ‘it oughta be a movie’, the white buccaneer naturalist William Dampier. But Dampier was already accepted as civilized (piratical reputation aside), and so could more safely express sympathy with “the other”. Equiano does point out several times that the inhabitants of Europe were once, in the not so distant past, as "uncivilized" as they now accuse others of being!
It could work as a framing device to start with Equiano drafting this narrative in 1788, with perhaps his wife or abolitionist colleagues asking him questions about what he’s working on or providing suggestions like: “Oh, you should tell the story about…”. You’d definitely want to include his childhood and kidnapping – though the two different African masters he had before being sold to the Europeans might have to be trimmed for time – a shortened version of his work on a naval ship before being betrayed and sent back to the West Indies, the trading schemes he used to accumulate the money to buy his freedom, taking charge of the emergency response to a shipwreck, and getting involved in the abolitionist movement. This should probably should include some of the racist responses he received for his activism. One writer of an anonymous letter to the editor no doubt thought himself very clever for using turns of phrase like: “The assertions made by that man that the Blacks [on route to Sierra Leone] were to be treated as badly as West-India negroes…shew him to be capable of advancing false-hoods as deeply black as his jetty face…Let us hear no more of those black reports…for if they are continued, it is rather more than probably that the dark transactions of a Black will be brought to light.” (His emphasis)
Overall recommendation: In style this book alternates between thrilling adventure narrative and didactic treatise, but the events and feelings it depicts are consistently interesting – as advertised! It provides a view of slavery by someone who had seen and personally experienced multiple forms, which throws the unusual brutality of the kind practiced in the Americans into sharper relief than usual. It illustrates the complexity of navigating the 18th century world as a free black man who hoped to influence that world. But it has an ultimately hopeful tone – The author was through hard effort and a lot of extremely lucky events able to get to a position where he could help others like himself. And, though he didn’t live to see the outlawing of the slave trade, let alone slavery itself, he clearly believed that day must come.
