Equiano’s Narrative contains an engrossing account of the author’s experiences in Africa, the Americas, and Europe as he sought freedom from bondage and became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement.
Written by Himself (1789) is one of the most frequently and heatedly discussed texts in the canon of eighteenth-century transatlantic literature written in English. The slave world now intrudes upon Georgian society and the conflict within our story therefore begins.The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Our story begins with the introduction of Olaudah Equiano in a meeting with Granville Sharp. The blending of fact and fiction created an artistic interpretation of Equiano as a character that I am proud of and would still like to see in a live action feature film. It meant recreating some incidents during this period in his life and applying artistic licence to invent the narrative. The film writer and director, Jason Young, says: ‘I had to imagine what their relationship would have been like for the four years that they were married (1792-96). Jason Young’s animation, ‘The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano’, focuses on their marriage as a backdrop to the campaign to abolish the slave trade. English womenwere a halfway position for freed slaves in 18th and 19th century England to guarantee not only their own freedom but the freedom of their offspring. The incentive to marrying a white woman in Georgian England was to have children who were born into freedom without the fear of them being kidnapped and shipped off into plantation slavery in the British Caribbean.
She is only mentioned in one sentence in his book, ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by himself’.
The film – ‘The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano’ – is a fictionalised account of the marriage between Equiano and his white wife. (One of their daughters, Anna Maria, is buried at St Andrew’s church in Chesterton.) The African abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano, married an English woman by the name of Susannah Cullen on the 7th April 1792 in Soham, Cambridgeshire. FILM: ‘The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano’ Directed by Jason Young
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