Cultural Hybridity in the Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

Abstract

This thesis examines cultural hybridity in The Interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was born around 1745 in Africa into the Eboe tribe in what is presently Nigeria. At the age of 11, he was captured and sold among other native Africans until, like many before him, he was sold to European slavers. Although he was born and raised in Africa, Equiano became a British by acculturation and choice. This binary opposition places him into his tenuous identity as the Afro-Britain. Not only must Equano come to terms with who he is, he must also learn to navigate this neither-both identity. Certainly, his choice to accept his new cultural identity as a British helps him deal with the anxieties of his hybridity. As the novel raises racial issues but with the sense of ambivalence, cultural analytical approach has been used for examining and analyzing cultural hybridity. By using one of the focal points of Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture as a conduit, I have examined Equiqno as neither the singular African nor Briton. He comes to be viewed, instead, as inhabiting an interstitial landscape caught between identities to which he can never fully partake-one from which he profits nevertheless.