Olaudah Equiano's Role In The Interesting Narrative

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For several months he lived on the Mosquito Coast managing a plantation that relied on slave labor. Equiano did not become an abolitionist until shortly before he wrote his autobiography, a searing indictment of the slave trade and chattel slavery. It played a role in the abolition of the British slave trade (1807) and was the model for future slave narratives. In 1999 historian Vincent Carretta revealed findings that suggest Olaudah Equiano was not born free in Africa as he claimed but enslaved in South Carolina. Even if its passages on Africa and Middle Passage are historical fiction, The Interesting Narrative remains a classic and its author a remarkable man.