ABSTRACT

English Writing, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press, 1988 Equiano’s autobiography has typically been claimed by two main groups of critics:

those who wish to situate it within the Anglo-African tradition of writers, such as Ignatius Sancho and Ottabah Cugoano, and those who wish to position it within the AfricanAmerican autobiographical tradition as the prototype of nineteenth-century slave narratives. As William Andrews argues, however, the fact that Equiano was a British citizen, whose autobiography was addressed to the English Parliament as part of the antislavery campaign, suggests that it is most appropriate to consider Equiano an AngloAfrican writer. Most recently, critics have raised questions about Equiano’s complicated relationship to both African and English culture, as that relationship is manifested in a text directed toward a predominantly white audience.