Authorship in muslim slave narratives: Job Ben Solomon, Omar Ibn Said, and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua

Literary canons reveal important insights regarding definitions of literature in specific periods and cultures. Canons considered in Anglophone literary criticism expanded significantly throughout the past five decades to include, for example, various non-fiction genres. One of these genres is the slave narrative. Despite the now widespread inclusion of slave narratives in literature anthologies, there is still little literary criticism dedicated to this genre. In particular, comparative studies focusing on more than one specific author or text omit the fact that among the many contributors to this unique type of autobiographical writing were many enslaved Muslims. This fact alters today’s understanding of the polyglot nature of the New World’s literary history, as it also adds a commonly concealed angle to the concept of Arab American identity. The present study discusses three slave narratives associated with Job Ben Solomon, Omar Ibn Said, and Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua and it highlights their importance for literary scholarship concerned with categories of autobiography, American literature, and historical fiction. The selection of the three authors in particular allows for considerations of amanuensis, translation, creolization and polyglot inclusion of African tribal language in the context of their narratives’ literary values.