Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Summary (from the publisher): A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer-prize winning author, Alice Walker brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.
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.
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.
Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this book from HarperCollins.
In this work of non-fiction, Zora Neale Hurston conveys the life story of Kossola, known as Cudjo Lewis, "the last surviving African of the last American slaver" (xi). Born in 1841 in West Africa, Kossola was captured by a neighboring tribe and sold to white slavers in 1860 at the age of 19. He was a slave for five years before being freed and he lived out the rest of his life in Plateau, Alabama. Hurston met with him in 1927 over several months to record his life story.
It is clear from Hurston's narration of her time with Cudjo that she was not always welcomed by him. At times he seems frustrated that she has come or is unwilling to talk about his painful past. Therefore, rather than interview him exhaustively, she gives him the space to talk as he wishes; "Rather than insert herself into the narrative as the learned and probing cultural anthropologist, the investigating ethnographer, or the authorial writer, Zora Neale Hurston, in her still listening, assumes the office of a priest" (xxxiii).
Cudjo's story as told to Hurston is important because of the millions that made the passage to America and were enslaved, this is one of only a handful of such recorded stories of that experience. He helps give voice to those who never got to tell their stories and the thousands who are disremembered. Indeed, accounts of Middle Passage are so rare that Deborah G. Plant states in the introduction that their are "no known accounts by deported African women of their experience before, during, and after the Middle Passage" (xxxvii).
Cudjo's story is of course remarkably sad and full of tragedies, from the loss of his whole family and country of birth, to struggles both before and after he won his freedom, and the loss of his children after he did mange to make a new family in America. His is a brief narrative and there were so many sections that I would have liked more detail on, such as the polygamous nature of his home country, his family in Africa, what living conditions were like for him as a slave, and more details about his wife's background and life. Although I found the vernacular writing style that Hurston chose hard to read and I wish yet more details had been captured, this was a valuable work that we are lucky to have, as it illuminates a painful yet important part of our country's history.
Review: 4
Comments
Post a Comment