Stephanie Smallwood Olaudah Equiano Analysis

Winston Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” By this he meant that he intended to win World War II and by being the victor, history would be on his side. While history often does take the side of the vanquisher, it can, by the influence of a dedicated few, sympathize or even support the lost voice of the vanquished. Although both Stephanie Smallwood and Olaudah Equiano did not write their descriptions of slavery in the late sixteenth century to mid seventeenth century from direct experience, they both created valuable documents that were as relevant to all readers’ lives then as they are now.
Throughout his narrative Olaudah Equiano leaves clues that some of his experiences in his early life are not his own. In 1789, when the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was written, there were few to no narratives accounting the lives of African slaves. By using European influenced language and analogies, he made the lives of African slaves seem less foreign and separated from the lives of his audience. An example of this is when he writes, “We practiced circumcision like the Jews, and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in
In Smallwood’s account she takes a more argumentative and fact based documentation of the slave trade, this can make the reader feel disconnected from the people she is describing. While Equiano takes a more story driven route, making the reader feel as though they experienced it themselves. Equiano’s narrative cannot give full description about what the slave trade’s effect was on a grand scale. However, Stephanie Smallwood does just that in describing in detail not just how the slave trade affected the slaves themselves but also how it affected the Africa they left behind. In this way the flaw of each writer’s account is supplemented by the other’s