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Title: Damning the first description of an 18th-century African childhood as inauthentic and its author as dishonest.
Review: Besides reading this biography I suggest reading Paul E. Lovejoy's article, "Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African." A professor of history at York University in Canada, Lovejoy holds the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora. His paper can be found on line and in examining inconsistencies in the documentary record (only the baptismal record and one ship's muster list show South Carolina as a birthplace for Equiano) concludes convincingly that Vassa was not inventing his African childhood.
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