Oct 31 - Equiano

Equiano. I'll be the first to admit that i exaggerate and make unfair and negative comments about the books and authors in this class. Now that i've got that off my chest, i'd like to defend Equiano and the validity of his book. In class we talked about whether the book was "true" or not, which is a different question than is the book "valid." However the two became very linked in our discussion. Whether equiano was born in africa or whether he was born a slave, or whether he had been a free black man his entire life it somewhat inconsequential to me. His story stands in for an experience of life at the time that was not being represented to the masses. THere were probably a lot of stories that were unrepresented to the masses, but probably none quite as important as a slave narrative.

THe issues were real and his book was a powerful tool. I really liked the short piece we read about how he is a DJ--using different samples from different mediums to create a synthesis that reflects his own vision.

The whole discussion of what "true" is (in this context) makes me think about how people agree on anything. It's basically just a majority rules system in which the people with the most power get to say what is true. In retrospect slavery is obviously terrible and immoral and all these other things... but certainly this was not so clear to white slave-oweners at the time. I would be really interested to learn about the process by which something that is obvious (slave owning is OK) goes to being confusing (is owning slaves ok?) to being obvious the other way (of course owning slaves is one of the worst practices of human kind).

The idea of slavery physically creeps me out.