Making Connections

Literature to 1700

1. Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph was one of the earliest antislavery tracts written and published in North America. Later antislavery tracts were written by Africans slaves themselves. See Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself and Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” (pages 748–81 and 810, respectively, in volume A) and Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (pages 2032–97 in volume B) for firsthand accounts of the human price of slavery that helped to make the United States a world economic power.
2. The addressee and purpose of a letter can determine its content and tone. Contrast the official rhetoric of Christopher Columbus’s letters to Luis de Santangel and to Ferdinand and Isabella with the casual style of Bayard Taylor’s letters home from California, collected in Eldorado (pages 2488–99 in volume B). In both examples, the writers have come to “new” lands in search of riches.
3. Although the political and historical context, as well as tone and effect, are substantially different, Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson finds many surprising similarities with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s much later story “The Yellow Wall-paper” (pages 832–44 in volume C).
4. The vast differences between colonial Christianity and Native American religions may be glimpsed upon by comparing Edward Taylor’s Preparatory Meditations and Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World with Native American chants, such as the Navajo Night Chant, Chippewa Songs, and Ghost Dance Songs (pages 989–94, 995–99, and 1000–1003, respectively, in volume C).

American Literature 1700–1820

1. In his The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, Olaudah Equiano speaks for himself about his experiences with slavery and his roots in Africa. More than a century later, a similar subject is addressed by Langston Hughes in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (see page 1892 in volume D), as well as in his other poems.
2. An impression of the vast range of American experiences and the means by which to express them may be seen by comparing texts as radically different as Benjamin Franklin’s mid-nineteenth-century writing, such as “The Way to Wealth,” and Gloria Anzaldúa’s late-twentieth-century writing, such as “La conciencia del la mestiza/Towards a New Consciousness” and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” (see pages 2435–2446 and 2446–2455, respectively, in volume E).
3. The high point of suffragette activism falls between Judith Sargent Murray’s earnest On the Equality of the Sexes and Dorothy Parker’s satirical poem “General Review of the Sex Situation” (see page 1615 in volume D).
4. James Grainger’s “The Sugar Cane: A Poem in Four Parts” explores themes related to the forced African diaspora, which was revisited and reworked in a very different style by Jean Toomer in his novel Cane (see pages 1636–40 in volume D).