Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

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.

Cudjo's narrative itself is quite fascinating but I found the arrangement and choice of supplemental information frustrating. For instance, footnotes from the editor claim Hughes' assumptions about Cudjo's African hometown to be erroneous, yet never offers the correct information or how we know she was wrong.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” is immensely important because it presents a first-hand narrative of the last-known survivor of the transatlantic shipment of Africans to the Americas and because it gifts the reading world with a lost work of Zora Neale Hurston's. Barracoon is an important work as any historical record, particularly one that lacked an abundance of first-hand narratives, should be. But Barracoon is just that: a historical record. Sure, it is written in the dialect, but it's ultimately the record of the life of Oluale Kossola (renamed Cudjo Lewis; I prefer to use the subject's given name).

Most readers are probably eager to hear Kossola's perspective on his life in Africa and his forced journey to America. This was my primary want from this narrative. Unfortunately, it becomes clear far too soon that Kossola is an old man trying to resurrect memories that are seventy years old. His memory of slavery in America is more than sixty years old. I've only lived half as long as Kossola did, but already my childhood memories have begun to jumble and I cannot help but question some of what I clearly recall. I have no doubt that Kossola's recollection was accurate in some regards, but surely some of those memories had grown fragile and corrupted with time. It's also too evident that he views his upbringing through a lens of Christian teaching, which casts much of it in a negative light.

Much of this narrative is about Kossola's life post-slavery. And while this is important and interesting, it presents little new to anyone who's familiar with life in the South for former slaves. Perhaps most interesting are Kossola's records of the Clotilda and some of the finer details of living in Africatown. Barracoon is not the eye-opening riveting story I hoped for, but I'm still glad that it was published and that I had the opportunity to read it.

A very important book to read, and a very important testimony for the History books. The more I read about the trans-atlantic Slave trade and the African American plight under Jim Crow, I just get more and more nauseous and disgusted. It is a bottomless pit of cruelty. And to people to just brush over the whole history of the black people kidnapped and sent as cargo to another continent, and wanting people to just “get over it”, these people haven't even glanced at 1% of the damage that was done. And to put it into context, these interviews were made in 1931, not even a century ago.

Kossola tells his story as an African man, in Africa first, that was captured, sold to a white man (with a bunch of others of course), shipped and smuggled into the US (as the slave trade had been abolished by then), worked as a slave, and of his “freedom” after the civil war, and living under Jim Crow. A very important aspect of his story, is the fact that he's an African man who has known Africa and its culture, and not a slave that was born in America. Another reason to be discriminated against, and the fact that his dream was to go back “home”, and not to be part of the country he was abducted into.

Basically, in a sentence, it just goes from really really bad to somehow even-worse-how-is-that-even-possible. Weirdly the book is not heavy, as Kossola does not dive into the horrifying details, as he very understandably did not like to talk about these issues in length.

I gave it a 4 instead of a 5, because it didn't feel like a whole book. I felt like a I needed a Historical study of the era, and not just some little footnotes under Kossola's statements, to round it all up. But definitely a must read.