Barracoon Barracoon

Barracoon

The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

    • 4.3 • 227 Ratings
    • $10.99
    • $10.99

Publisher Description

New York Times Bestseller •  TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018  • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • 

“A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times

“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison

“Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker

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.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2018
May 8
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
256
Pages
PUBLISHER
Amistad
SELLER
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS
SIZE
6.8
MB

Customer Reviews

Twogatekeeper ,

Just a piece of advise

Please start reading with the second introduction. The first part of the book is someone writing about what you will read and it spoils it. The second introduction is truly the start of the book and gives you all the background information you need.

Thanks

angeleno704 ,

A Book Everyone Should Read

Wow Cudjo Lewis is a storyteller allowing us to get a glimpse of his life. An important read!

Rukiya777 ,

Unique & Fascinating

You get a glimpse into what it was like for an African while on their own soil, then going through capture, middle passage, and arrival. It's very humanizing and makes it real versus a tragic human event. It shows African American slaves as three dimensional human beings, and the traumas human beings suffered as they were dragged away forever. It's a voice I've never heard before, usually a slave story begins with either the middle passage or begins with them having arrived in America. I loved it and read it within a few hours.

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