Barracoon The story of the last "black cargo"

Zora Neale Hurston

Book - 2018

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life.... During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.--Publisher's website.

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BIOGRAPHY/Lewis, Cudjo
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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Zora Neale Hurston (author)
Other Authors
Alice Walker, 1944- (writer of foreword)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xxviii, 171 pages : illustration ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 155-171).
ISBN
9780062748201
  • Foreword. Those who love us never leave us alone with our grief : reading Barracoon : the story of the last "black cargo" / by Alice Walker
  • Introduction
  • Editor's note
  • Barracoon. Preface
  • Introduction
  • The king arrives
  • Barracoon
  • Slavery
  • Freedom
  • Marriage
  • Kossula learns about law
  • Alone
  • Appendix. Takkoi or Attako--children's game
  • Stories Kossula told me
  • The monkey and the camel
  • Story of de Jona
  • Now disa Abraham fadda de faitful
  • The lion woman
  • Afterword and additional materials / edited by Deborah G. Plant.
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* In 1931, years before the fiction and folklore that ultimately would make her famous, Hurston completed a nonfiction account of a man who was one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade. Kossola (Cudjo Lewis) was captured at age 19, lived for five-and-a-half years as a slave, and later helped found Africatown, renamed Plateau, Alabama. As an ethnographer, Hurston came to meet and interview the 86-year-old Kossola but understood the value of his first-person narrative as folk art, preserving stories and traditions conveyed by those who actually lived them. Like a griot and in his own vernacular, Kossola recalled his life in Africa, the wars that resulted in enslavement, the Middle Passage journey to America, and life as a slave. He also spoke of his Christian faith and memories of the spiritual traditions of his homeland and his lifelong yearning for Africa. The introduction provides context for Hurston's struggle with the conventions of ethnography and her own appreciation for the opportunity to learn about the slave trade from the perspective of the enslaved. This is a fascinating look at the journey of one man, reflective of the African American experience. It also attests to Hurston's development as an author and ethnographer, and stands as a work of profound relevance, its illumination of slavery, freedom, and race as timely as ever. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This newly published work by trailblazer Hurston, with a foreword by Alice Walker, will garner tremendous attention.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This previously unpublished manuscript from Hurston (1891-1960) is a remarkable account of the life of Kossola, also known as Cudjo Lewis, the last survivor of the last American slave ship. Before writing Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston was working as an anthropologist in 1927 when she traveled to Plateau, Ala., to interview 86-year-old Kossola. Returning to Plateau in 1931 for three months, Hurston documented Kossola's life story in this short manuscript, whose brevity disguises its richness and depth. Consisting primarily of transcriptions from their conversations, Kossola recalls his capture in Africa, the Middle Passage, his five and a half years as a slave, the Civil War, the struggles following Emancipation, and the terrors after Reconstruction (his son was killed by a deputy sheriff in 1902). Kossola was 19 years old when he was sold into slavery; thus, his accounts of folkways and traditions (e.g., the decapitated heads hanging from the belts of the Dahomian warriors who captured him) offer more graphic and personal immediacy than other surviving narratives of the slave trade, like those of Equiano or Gronniosaw, who were small children at the time of their capture. While Hurston acknowledges that her account "makes no attempt to be a scientific document, but on the whole is rather accurate," Kossola's story-in the vernacular of his own words-is an invaluable addition to American social, cultural, and political history. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Novelist Zora Neale Hurston drafted Barracoon in 1931, but the work has never been published until now. At once a work of anthropology, folklore, and reminiscence, the book relates the interviews Hurston conducted in 1927 with Cudjo Lewis (1840-1935), the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade. Much of Lewis's retelling focuses on growing up in a Yoruba village in West Africa, his capture by slavers and transport on the Middle -Passage in 1860, and life after emancipation in helping to build Africatown, a refuge former slaves established near Mobile, AL. Lewis describes his brutal enslavement and the racism that followed his emancipation. Hurston demonstrates interest, even shock, at what Lewis chooses to tell her. This is a rare account of the full experience of enslavement from capture to "freedom," and a revealing look at Hurston's maturing as a folklorist sensitive to dialect and interviewees' authority over their own stories. This first edition of Barracoon gains from author Deborah Plant's introduction, which places Hurston's work in historical and literary context and addresses her folkloristic approach to frame Lewis's interviews. VERDICT A brief book that tells a significant story; for fans of Hurston and African American and world history. [See Prepub Alert, 11/12/17.]-Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A newly discovered work of anthropological and historical reportage by the canonical African-American writer.Cudjo Lewis (c. 1841-1935), originally named Kossola, was enslaved in America for five years. An Isha Yoruba from the town of Bant, he arrived in Alabama as the Civil War was stirring. A student of the pioneering ethnologist Franz Boas, Hurston (Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States, 2001, etc.) conducted a series of interviews with Lewis toward the end of his life, in 1927, who, on learning of her interest, said, "Thankee Jesus! Somebody come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee somebody who I is, so maybe day go in de Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody say, Yeah, I know Kossola.' " The initial manuscript, a scholarly article, fell into disrepute when, in the 1970s, scholars discerned that it borrowed heavily from existing literature. This fuller manuscript derives from Hurston's original fieldwork, so that there is no question of plagiarism. Editor Plant observes that in the work, Hurston "was engaged in the process of actualizing her vision of herself as a social scientist and an artist who was determined to present Kossola's story in as authentic a manner as possible." That authenticity includes rendering his words in patois. While Hurston writes that even though Kossola's account is not strictly historical, it serves "to emphasize his remarkable memory." That mark of the griot, or West African traditional storyteller, is evident as Kossola recounts moments of resistance, as when enslaved women rose up against a vicious overseer: "dey all jump on him and lashee him wid it. He doan never try whip Affican women no mo'." Such episodes, including one in which Kossola tried to convince his former owner to give the manumitted slaves some of the land on which he worked, are historically valuable indeed, while his renderings of biblical stories and West African folktales are of ethnographic interest.We are fortunate to have this late work of Hurston's, which is sure to be widely read. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.