Out of Africa?

One of the only first-person accounts of a slave ship's misery comes from the book 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,' an 18th-century autobiography of an African writer known as Olaudah Equiano. Equiano's narrative has become a staple of African-American literature and history, one that professors routinely rely on to convey the pain of slavery to their students. But now a professor has turned up evidence that Equiano may not have endured the middle passage--indeed, he may not have set foot in Africa. That's the stunning implication of two clues, a baptism record and a ship muster list, that University of Maryland English professor Vincent Carretta recently uncovered. Next month, academics will meet at Kingston University in London to debate Equiano's true identity and discuss what, if anything, to do about it. Protestations that Carretta hasn't found a "smoking gun," however, imply that Equiano is on trial for some kind of crime.