Leah Hopkins
ENG 396
Prof. Rojas
March 1, 2019
Identity Formation in the Face of the Trauma of Chattel Slavery
“For children of color, biculturality is not a free choice, but a prerequisite for successful participation and eventual success” (Anderson 1988). In the following pages, another term to define the behavior of insulating oneself as a person of color in self-preservation is double consciousness (Lloréns 2019). Double consciousness is the act in which people of color living in a Northern European dominated or Colonial-centric system must live within and function accordingly to the societal norms of their own culture, but more importantly, must perform these functions for the white Euro-Colonial society. Colloquially, this can be termed as “knowing your audience” and how to act accordingly. Sharpe defines this in of the Black experience and the non/being of Blackness: “Living in the wake means living the history and present of terror, from slavery to the present, as ground of our everyday Black existence…Black people, being the carriers of terror, terror’s embodiment, and not the primary object of terror’s multiple enactments, (Sharpe 15). In The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, the subject of the narrative (whom will be called Equiano throughout this paper), functions within a double consciousness, with more emphasis placed on becoming recognized as an English gentleman, though he cannot escape his Blackness in the eyes of Euro-Colonial aggressors. Abducted from his community in Eboa (present day Nigeria) at 11 years old, put on a slave ship traveling across the Atlantic to the West Indies witnessing horrific sights and experiencing unspeakable treatments, Equiano was to be sold into slavery in the West Indies, experiencing further physical and psychological trauma. These experiences caused incredible stress and suffering upon Equiano, as a human being, but moreover as someone with adolescent brain development who lacks the ability to process such trauma as someone who is fully developed. Throughout the narrative, Equiano returns to this trauma through what can be described as rememory—a term borrowed from Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved. For the purposes of this paper, rememorycan be defined as a flashback associated with complex- post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD): “Complex PTSD has been described as typically associated with chronic and repeated traumas and includes not only the symptoms of PTSD but also disturbances in self-organization reflected in emotion regulation, self-concept and relational difficulties, a symptom profile that has been demonstrated as associated with prolonged trauma” (Cloitre). Through Equiano’s narrative, we see a forming of an identity that is rooted in the trauma caused by his abduction and forced separation from his mother and community, his experiences in the Middle Passage, the lack of predictability in his day to day life and the loss of control over his own personal fate. These traumas, at times are revisited throughrememory, but often suppressed, and his suffering forces him to take on an identity shaped not on his own accord but one that is imposed upon him as a means of survival—which has always been the fate of Blackness in the wake of chattel slavery.
Equiano begins his narrative by giving the reader an introduction to his African homeland of Eboa, and his culture, customs and family history. Let it be noted, that his narrative is published in 1789, roughly 35 years after his initial capture. Equiano’s language in the first two chapters of his narrative are interesting, as he switches between “I/me/we/us” to “the natives/they/them.” This linguistic change is indicative of separation between himself and “the other,” such as follows: “We compute the year from the day on which the sun crosses the line…They have many offerings, particularly at full moons…” (Equiano 27). Equiano continuously creates a separation from the customs of his own people, giving an almost “outside” perspective on his community as would a British anthropologist. The lack of cultural ownership may be as a result of years of conditioning to self deprecate, or could be a means of coping with the loss of Equiano’s original identity. Outside of these two chapters, Equiano never laments about home, nor his mother and seems to have no interest in ever returning there. Equiano notes that he was close to his mother as a boy: “I was very fond of my mother, and almost constantly with her” (27), he goes on, “I was so fond of my mother I could not keep from her, or avoid touching her at some of those periods, in consequence of which I was obliged to be kept out with her, in a little house…” (28), as Equiano is referring to staying with his mother in a small house outside of the family’s home during her menses. Equiano speaks of the tenderness of his mother, and other than the account of his sister being kidnapped with him, he gives no explanation of anyone else’s disposition in his family: “As I was the youngest of the sons, I became, of course, the greatest favourite with my mother and I was always with her; and she used to take particular pains to form my mind…my mother adorned me with emblems, after the manner of our greatest warriors. In this way I grew up till I was turned the age of eleven, when an end was put to my happiness…(32). It can be assumed that Equiano had a secure attachment style with his mother as his primary caregiver. It is at this time that the reader learns that he was then abducted, taken across the continent, and placed on a chattel slave ship bound for the West Indies. Alongside grown adult men and women, Equiano is one of the many children aboard the ship. Black and Brown children have been and still are commodities and pawns, in which colonial structures use parent-child and sibling separation as a means of controlling all parties. This can be seen time and again throughout history—using our example of Equiano being forcibly removed from his home and community and ultimately his mother. This practice of removing Black and Brown children has continued and is very apparent in the record through the removal of Black and Indigenous children to use as indentured servants to pay their parent’s debts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries; the parental separation of Indigenous children as young as five being taken from their families and placed in residential school systems where they suffered horrific abuses at the hands of clergy and the US and Canadian governments; the continued removal of Black, Latinx and Indigenous children and placement into Department of Human Services custody at disproportionally high rates as opposed to their White counterparts; and most recently the forced separation of Latinx and Central American Indigenous children from their parents at the United States-Mexico border. In all these instances, the psychological violence experienced by Olaudah Equiano stolen from his home and placed aboard the slave ship crossing the Atlantic, is the same psychological violence experienced by the referenced communities 400 years later. “Studies have shown that if a child suddenly loses a parent, either through death, abandonment, or a prolonged separation, the child experiences intense fear, panic, grief (a combination of sadness and loss), depression, helplessness and hopelessness. The child has lost his lifeline, and often his sense of self. The world, and life, become disorganized and terrifying” (Wallace 2018).
Equiano does not discuss his family or his home beyond the first two chapters—perhaps it is too painful. He also has rememory—or sudden memories of the slave ship, which he quickly tries to push out of his mind. The concept of rememoryis explained by Toni Morrison’s character, Sethe in Beloved:”’I was talking about time. It’s so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places are still there”’ (Morrison 88). Equiano’s own account of rememory is as follows:
At the sight of this land bondage, a fresh horror ran through all my frame, and chilled me to the heart. My former slavery now rose in dreadful review to my mind, and displayed nothing but misery, stripes, and chains; and, in the first paroxysm of my grief, I called upon God’s thunder, and his avenging power, to direct the stroke of death to me, rather than permit me to become a slave, and be sold from lord to lord. (73)
Equiano’s flashbacks are symptomatic of his C-PTSD, and his lack of discussion and comment on his home, his family, or even a desire to return to Africa speaks to the trauma he endured, but may also be a symptom of his conditioning as being taken as a slave at such an early and influential age. The age of adolescent teens and young adults is a time where one’s identity is first explored and then solidified as they approach closer to adulthood. Equiano spent much of this time being sold from master to master, and traveled from ship to ship, lacking consistency, parental guidance, love and support. At times, he was in harsh situations, and witnessed cruel and deplorable punishments of slaves. He began to take comfort in the “kindness” afforded to him by his masters, specifically Michael Pascal, Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and Robert King, the merchant master on Monserrat. It is possible that he did experience kind treatment, however, it is likely that he took solace in the fact that his masters were not harsh on him and he took that as kindness, all the while still being enslaved. He formed affections and love for these masters. In the article, The Sambo Mentality and the Stockholm Syndrome Revisited: Another Dimension to an Examination of the Plight of the African American, a 1993 journal article published in the Journal of Black Studies by Barbara Huddleston-Mattai and P. Rudy Mattai, it is noted “…because the master or captor did not implement the worst expectations of the slaves or captives, a sense of relief is felt, and the master or captor is now revered as a good person. Interestingly, both positive gratitude (for care and caring) and negative gratitude (for not being treated worse or being killed) are present.” (Huddleston-Mattai and Mattai 346). Equiano continuously speaks of the gratitude he holds for both Captain Doran and Robert King and the care and consideration that was given to him:
I was very grateful to Captain Doran, and even to my old master, for the character they had given me; a character which I afterwards found of infinite service to me…I soon found that he fully deserved the good character which Captain Doran had given me of him; for he possessed a most amiable disposition and temper, and was very charitable and humane. If any of his slaves behaved a miss he did not beat or use them ill, but parted with them. (74)
Although no direct physical violence by King is felt by the slaves, the act of parting with them is equally as disturbing as it is implied that King would sell the slave, subjecting them to future horrific treatment by their next master. This indirect violence is then coupled with psychological violence experienced by the slave of not knowing their future conditions and personal safety. Equiano worked for many years in the mandated service of Robert King, but even after his emancipation, found it difficult to reject offers from him and continued to serve him—indicative that although he is legally free, King still holds mental control over Equiano: “…but Mr. King still pressed me very much to stay with his vessel; and he had done so much for me that I found myself unable to refuse his requests…” (Equiano 112).
Equiano’s status of a slave has caused him to take on a personality that was shaped and formed by his masters in his youth and young adult life. This power dynamic of master-slave is incredibly influential and powerful, causing the slave to be conditioned to take on another personality in spite of their own. This is also a marker of C-PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome. In TheSambo Mentality, Huddleston-Mattai and Mattai argue:
In reality, the slave owner laid claims to an absolute control of the slave, and, therefore, the very state of condition of a slave’s being were at the discretion of the slave owner. Indeed, the regulation of behavior and resultant adjustment that was made had a direct influence on the consequent formation of the slave’s personality. The implication for this newly formed personality is that there may be a relinquishing of the guiding principles and values of the old personality, and, more than that, there may be a predisposition toward doing anything in order to survive. (Huddleston-Mattai and Mattai 346)
Equiano is constantly living in terror as a result of his Blackness. His Blackness, created by the mother he mentions but three times—“…to turn the womb into a factory producing blackness as abjection much like the slave ship’s hold and the prison, and turning the birth canal into another domestic Middle Passage with Black mothers, after the end of legal hypodescent, still ushering their children into their condition; their non/status, their non/being-ness,” (Sharpe 74). Every day seems to be a day where survival must be achieved in the face of constant threats of brutality, being sold, death and re-enslavement. His survival strategy has become the taking on of a personality that he believes is desirable among his masters. The personality of one who is educated, God-fearing, well spoken, hard working, and most importantly indispensable—these are all traits that Equiano seems to take on to imitate his White owners, Captains and comrades in order to attempt to culturally camouflage himself although his skin color cannot be concealed. James Anderson in reference to biculturality explains that,
Non-white children generally are expected to be bicultural, bidialectic, or bicognitive; to measure their performance against a Euro-American yardstick; and to maintain this orientation. At the same time, they are being castigated whenever they attempt to express and validate their indigenous cultural and cognitive styles. Under such conditions cognitive conflict becomes the norm rather than the exception.
This is apparent with the lack of reference that Equiano has to his home and community of Eboa. He has been stripped of his Eboan identity, by his own means as a method of survival against physical and psychological trauma; but more importantly he has been stripped of his childhood. For the next 400 years, Black children will continue to live in the wake of the slave ship, as Equiano did, being stripped of their childhood, their freedom, their rights, and upon receiving them on the record only in the last hundred years to live and die as if they have never been granted at all.
Works Cited
Anderson, James A. “Cognitive Styles and Multicultural Populations.” Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 39, no. 1, 1988, pp. 2–9., doi:10.1177/002248718803900102.
Cloitre, Marylène, et al. “Distinguishing PTSD, Complex PTSD, and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Latent Class Analysis.” European Journal of Psychotraumatology, vol. 5, no. 1, 2014, p. 25097., doi:10.3402/ejpt.v5.25097.
Equiano, Olaudah, and Werner Sollors. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Norton, 2001.
Huddleston-Mattai, Barbara A., and P. Rudy Mattai. “The Sambo Mentality and the Stockholm Syndrome Revisited.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 1993, pp. 344–357., doi:10.1177/002193479302300304.
Lloréns, Hilda. “Class Lecture.” History of Anthropological Theory. Class Lecture, 7 Feb. 2019, Kingston, University of Rhode Island.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage, 1994.
Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. In the Wake: on Blackness and Being. Duke University Press, 2016.
Wallace, Meri. “The Effect of Separating Children From Their Parents.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-raise-happy-cooperative-child/201806/the-effect-separating-children-their-parents.
