synonym See SAVE / In 1798 Venture Smith, the eldest son of an African prince, dictates the narrative of his life, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America. Related by Himself, to Elisha Niles, a Connecticut schoolmaster. Approximately ten years later, in 1810, itinerant preacher George White publishes the story of his life, appropriately titled: A Brief Account of the Life, Experiences, Travels and Gospel Labours of George White, an African; Written by Himself and Revised by a Friend. While the two narratives reflect vastly different experiences of bondage, both Smith's and White's autobiographical stories highlight acts of redemption: Smith and White consciously try to recover and restore what is lost and stolen from them by the institution of slavery. By charting the literary influence of the captivity narrative and spiritual autobiography tradition on Smith's and White's narratives, we can see a common rhetorical strategy both men employ: using conventional Anglo- American literary genres to tell unconventional African American stories. To fully understand the genre of slave narrative requires a familiarity with the other literary genres that have influenced the slave narrative form and that have also been transformed by the slave narrative tradition. In exploring the influence of the captivity narrative and the spiritual autobiography on these two texts, we can use Smith’s and White’s narratives to illuminate the literary interconnections that exist, on a lesser scale, in most all of the texts in the slave narrative tradition.