This class will discuss the life and significance of Olaudah Equiano (1745?-1797). In 1789 he published in London his best-selling autobiography, which recounts an odyssey from being enslaved in Africa as a child to wealth and international fame. A key document in the movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, Equiano's Interesting Narrative is the foundational text in the genre of the African American slave narrative. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., considers Equiano "the father of both the African and the African American literary traditions and the most important black man in the 18th century."