Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World: History, Society, and Atlantic Diaspora Connections (review)

Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World comprises seventeen essays of wide-ranging quality by nonacademic and academic authors from various disciplines. The core essays are based on papers given at a 2007 conference on Olaudah Equiano in Nigeria. The collection needs to be approached with great care because it is so poorly edited for style and content. What other than careless editing can account for sentences such as "Equiano is a fresh thesis who deserves study in issues relating to doubts and contempt of African identity and personality" (130)? Names are often misspelled, publications misattributed, and flawed, abridged, and/or modernized editions of Equiano's Interesting Narrative are frequently cited rather than the authoritative 1789 first edition or the 2003 Penguin edition.

The most weakly argued contributions are among the seven essays that discuss Equiano directly. I am not an unbiased reviewer of these essays because they attack me and my editorial, critical, and biographical publications in ways I consider unprofessional. In "The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano," Catherine Obianuju Acholonu describes herself as the victim of "a grand conspiracy" (56) headed by "[Chinua] Achebe apologist" Paul Edwards and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who are guilty of "defacing [her] work." According to Acholonu, because I have published baptismal and naval records that say Equiano was born in South Carolina, I am "intent on sensationalizing the whole matter" of her disputed claims that she has found Equiano's birthplace in Africa (59). She later refers to me as an "enfant terrible hungry for fame, with loads of vested interests and ulterior motives" (61). Dorothy Chinwe Ukaegbu also employs Acholonu's ad hominem tactics in two essays in Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World, accusing me of "impugning ethnographic research results" because I have expressed skepticism about Acholonu's methodology: "Among Carretta's criticisms is the issue of the longevity of the subjects upon which Acholonu relied for evidence. According to Carretta, it is not feasible for a person to live to be one hundred and fifty years old as Acholonu had calculated in the genealogy of her Isseke data" (70). Ukaegbu concludes: "By such conduct, Carretta left himself open to possible questions about his motives and the basic intent of his work" (111). One can disagree with someone without being disagreeable, or descending to name-calling and insinuating malevolent motives.

Fortunately, Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World contains several essays whose quality counterbalances that of Acholonu and Ukaegbu's pieces. These include Chima J. Korieh's "Introduction" and his "Igbo Ethnicity and Identity in the Atlantic Diaspora." One wishes, though, that Korieh and others paid more attention to what he refers to as "the problematic of Igbo identity." Adiele Afigbo's "Revolution and Reaction in Eastern Nigeria, 1900–1929: The Background to the Women's Riot of 1929" is the fullest treatment of a crucial historical event touched on by other contributors. And Douglas B. Chambers's "Igbo Women in the Early Modern Atlantic World: The Burden of Beauty" is a welcome comparison of eighteenth-century stereotypes of enslaved "Igbo" men and women.