James Stout

Yeah, I'd love to assign Equiano to my undergraduate courses.

Yeah, yeah.

He's got a book.

Yeah, and you can find it online.

It's free, right?

We'll be quoting from it some here.

A fascinating person.

So Equiano had been born around 1745 in Igbo, part of modern-day Nigeria, which was then part of the Kingdom of Benin.

And although he claimed his village was only nominally controlled by the king, right?

That like, yeah, we have a king, but he's not really a factor in daily life, which is probably accurate.

As a young boy, he'd never heard of white men or Europeans or even the ocean.

His father was a village elder and held a high position in local government.

As a child, Olaudah seems to have had a keen eye for injustice.

Because of his father's position, he spent a good deal of time watching court proceedings and later wrote that adultery for women was often punished by slavery or death.

Quote, the men, however, do not preserve the same constancy to their wives, which they expect from them.

One thing you see about Alota is that he is he is a thinker.

This is not a man who just accepts like, oh, yeah, adultery.

You got to kill a woman if she does that.

He's a man who's like, but the guys are all cheating and nobody cares about that.

It seems unfair.