This book explores relationships among African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-British narratives of slavery and of New World and British oppression and what African influences brought to these diasporic expressions. It examines the work of Pan-African trickster icons, such as Leuk (rabbit), Golo (monkey), Bouki (hyena), Mbe (tortoise), and Anancy (spider), on the resistance strategies of early black writers who were exposing the evils of slavery, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, and other forms of oppression.

African and Puritan dimensions of Phillis Wheatley's poems and letters -- Pan-Africanism in Quobna Ottobah Cugoano's liberation discourse -- Pan-Africanism in Olaudah Equiano's interesting narrative -- Africanism and Methodism in the works of Elizabeth Hart Thwaites and Anne Hart Gilbert -- African and Caribbean patterns in Mary Prince's resistance.