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Keith Mosman: A Long(ish) List of Recent Short Story Collections (0 comment)
May is Short Story Month, so I’ll keep this brief: here is a list of the some of the collections that I’ve read in recent months (even though most of them weren’t officially dedicated to the form)...
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  • Kelsey Ford: Celebrate Short Story Month: 7 Recommendations Based on 7 Collections We Love (0 comment)

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Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo

by Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah G Plant
Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo

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ISBN13: 9780062748201
ISBN10: 0062748203
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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From Powells.com

Black History Month

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Hot new releases and under-the-radar gems for adults and kids.


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Staff Pick

Zora Neale Hurston left us a rich legacy of black cultural history through her recordings as an anthropologist of the African American folk narrative, striving to, as she puts it “set down essential truth.” Here in this vital addition to her already known work are interviews documenting Cudjo Lewis’s own story, the last known living African American to arrive on a black slave ship. Because she preserves his original vernacular in writing, it provides us with the rare opportunity to take in Cudjo’s experiences as firsthand observers, giving an account of history so important to America and Africa’s past. Recommended By Aubrey W., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God which brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade — illegally smuggled from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, to interview ninety-five-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 Clotilde, 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 brilliantly illuminates the tragedy of slavery and 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

"That Zora Neale Hurston should find and befriend Cudjo Lewis, the last living man with firsthand memory of capture in Africa and captivity in Alabama, is nothing shy of a miracle. Barracoon is a testament to the enormous losses millions of men, women and children endured in both slavery and freedom — a story of urgent relevance to every American, everywhere." Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Life on Mars and Wade in the Water

Review

"Barracoon reinforces what those of us who love Hurston’s work have known all along: her keen intellect and curiosity was only surpassed by her genuine empathy for her subjects. This book is not just an account of one man’s survival in the face of atrocity, it’s a celebration of language and tradition; a clear labor of love." Angela Flournoy, National Book Award Finalist and author of The Turner House

Review

"Barracoon is a powerful, breathtakingly beautiful, and at times, heart wrenching, account of one man’s story, eloquently told in his own language. Zora Neale Hurston gives Kossola control of his narrative — a gift of freedom and humanity." Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun

Review

"Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece." Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. An author of four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948); two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1927. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1973, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravesite with this epitaph: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South."

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Average customer rating 4.5 (2 comments)

`
Lukas , September 20, 2018 (view all comments by Lukas)
"All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold." Remarkable document that was written in 1931 but only recently published. Zora Neale Hurston, best known for her novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God," went to Alabama to interview octogenarian Cudjo Lewis, who had been abducted from his home in Africa and sold into slavery. He has a remarkable memory and Hurston presents his account, giving voice to the the millions who were silenced. Presented as a scholarly work, there are notes, appendixes, and introduction, and a forward by Alice Walker, all of which help give it context. A major rediscovery.

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Sally-Jayne , May 25, 2018 (view all comments by Sally-Jayne)
This is the missing piece to the puzzle of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston almost completely leaves herself out of the narrative, except to explain the circumstances of her interviews and to ask questions. She captures Kossula's voice and inflection, which allows the reader to be in the moment with him. His story is unique, in how he remembers his African village, being captured, the voyage on the Clotilda, and going from being a free youth to a slave to a free man in America. There are many slave narrative texts recorded during the same years Hurston interviewed Cudjo, but they lack the back stories and the depth of interest by the interviewers; they tell the stories of freed slaves, but only with glimpses into their lives, not with the investigative story-telling Zora Neale Hurston brings to her texts.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780062748201
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
05/08/2018
Publisher:
AMISTAD PRESS INC
Pages:
208
Height:
.80IN
Width:
5.80IN
Author:
Zora Neale Hurston
Editor:
Deborah G Plant
Foreword:
Alice Walker

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