Slave narratives are an important contribution to the early American republic cannon. This type of literature demonstrates how persons that were enslaved reacted to their situation and how they found a way to live in the world. For example, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797,) also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawmakers to abolish the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he eventually purchased his freedom.
Offering a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life, slave narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. Some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief can be found in these texts.
Challenging the conscience of a nation, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Nat Turner, Harriet A. Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, and Frederick Douglass are among others who have written an account of their lives as a slave.
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