Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful to

From 1927 to 1931, cultural anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last living former slave in the United States and prepared an account of his life for publication. The manuscript never found a taker until 2018, when acclaimed novelist Alice Walker arranged for it to be brought into the light of day. We’re deeply indebted to her for the effort. Hurston’s book offers us an eloquent and moving tale that adds heft to our understanding of our past. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” brings a personal dimension to the slave trade, the lived experience of slavery in the US, and the violent years that followed for African-Americans during nearly a century after emancipation. A slave for “five years and six months” Kossola—renamed Cudjo Lewis in Alabama—was eighty-six years old when Zora Neale Hurston showed up in Africatown (Plateau), Alabama, to interview him for the Journal of Negro History. He was, after all, the last living former slave and his story cried out to be told. Born on or around 1841 and captured by slavers at the age of nineteen, he was force-marched to the coast and imprisoned with hundreds of others in one of the many barracoons where slaves were interned before sale to white men. (The word is derived from the Portuguese and means “barracks.”) Once landed in Alabama, Kossola then lived as a slave for “five years and six months.” To chronicle his story, Hurston returned again and again over a period of three months, gradually piecing together Kossola’s heart-wrenching tale. The man had a truly remarkable memory and could summon up precise dates, names, and conversations from nearly nine decades in the past, much of which was confirmed by independent sources. The result is a gripping account that spans nearly a century of our national shame. A folklorist by training as well as inclination, Hurston carefully reproduces Kossola’s fractured English in the extensive quotes that form the basis of her account. For example, she reports him saying at the outset, “When I come away from Afficky I only a boy 19 year old. . . We come in de ‘Merica soil naked and de people say we naked savage. Dey say we doan wear no clothes. Dey doan know de [African porters] snatch our clothes ‘way from us.” There is a certain charm, and doubtless authenticity, in this practice. It’s easy to hear the man talking as you read. Sixty-seven years of oppression When Hurston interviewed Kossola, the Civil War had been over for sixty-two years. Thus, Kossola’s experience in the United States was largely that of Reconstruction and the era of Jim Crow that followed. Unsurprisingly, he and his family fell victim to some of the worst practices of the time. Kossola and his wife had five children, but she and all five were long dead when Hurston met him. One of their four sons was shot to death without warning by a deputy sheriff who had lain in wait for him at a local store. A second son disappeared one day and most likely met a horrible death as well. Kossola himself was struck by a train and injured badly enough that he was unable to work again—and one of his sons was killed in a similar “accident” not long afterward. (A court found the railroad liable for Kossola’s injury and ordered the company to compensate him, but “Cudjo doan gittee no money.”) Yet somehow he survived, lonely though he was. His church employed him as sexton. He died in 1935 at the age of ninety-four or ninety-five. The African role in the slave trade What is most remarkable about Barracoon is Kossola’s detailed account of the nighttime attack on his village in which his entire family was slaughtered and he was bound off to the coast as a slave. Hurston certainly found this surprising. “The inescapable fact that stuck in my craw,” she wrote, “was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me.” And it’s hard to overlook the savagery and cynicism of the attack by the soldiers of the King of Dahomey. As Kossola explains, Dahomey was unlike other societies in the region in that its principal income derived not from agriculture but from slaving. As Alice Walker notes in her foreword, “this is, make no mistake, a harrowing read.” The slave trade According to Canadian historian Paul Lovejoy, a specialist in African history and the diaspora, “the estimated number of Africans caught in the dragnet of slavery between 1450,” when the Portuguese brought the first large number of slaves from Africa to Europe, “and 1900 was 12,817,000.” Only 10.7 million of them survived the dreaded Middle Passage. Brazil—long a Portuguese colony—received the largest proportion of them, an estimated total of 4.9 million. A surprisingly small percentage arrived in the United States: estimates range as low as 388,000 and as high as between one and two million. Yet by 1900, African-Americans numbered 8.8 million, or nearly twelve percent of the country’s population. Kossola may have been the last living former slave in the United States, but millions of others or their immediate families had shared much of the same experience. Kossola was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1859. He was one of 110 captives from the present-day nation of Benin who constituted what was reportedly “the last black cargo” to arrive in the United States. Half a century earlier, the slave trade had been abolished in both Britain (1807) and the US (1808). In fact, the Clotilda—the ship that bore Kossola to America—lay hidden for more than two months to avoid detection by Federal authorities. In the end, the ship’s captain failed. The three brothers who were his partners in the venture “were tried in the federal courts in 1860-61 and fined heavily for bringing in the Africans.” However, they had succeeded in spiriting the slaves off to the plantations they owned in the area. About the author Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, and folklorist who studied at Barnard College under legendary anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University, who assigned her the task of interviewing Cudjo Lewis (Kossola) for the Journal of Negro History. But Hurston was best known to the public in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as an author. She wrote numerous novels, short stories, and works of poetry as well as nonfiction and an autobiography.

For a little over a year, I've devoted most of my reading time and review space to promotion of new (and often Texas) authors. I made the decision in the last quarter of this year to focus on reading some books on my personal to-be-read list. Barracoon: The Story of the "Last Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston was a find through an Amazon daily deal back in July of this year that I have been meaning to get back to. I took some time over a long weekend to dig in and read this amazing work of non-fiction by Hurston, who is most notably remembered for her work of fiction - Their Eyes were Watching God. Barracoon is a biographical account of the last known surviving and formerly enslaved African, Cudjo Lewis*, his capture and forced voyage in the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the Clotilda - the reported last slave ship to come to the United States from Africa. Barracoon is a Spanish word that translates to "barracks." It is the facility where Africans were held before being sold and transported into slavery. Koosula ended up in Alabama and eventually became a free man at the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War. He lived through capture, forced detainment, slavery, and the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. At 94, Koosula died in 1935. *[Cudjo was known as Koosula in the motherland, and he seemed overjoyed for Hurston to refer to him by his real name. Therefore, for the remainder of this review, he will be Koosula.] Hurston met Koosula at the request of Charlotte Osgood Mason, who funded Hurston's trips to Alabama to interview and write Koosula's story. As it happens with most biographers, Hurston developed a personal yet professional relationship with Koosula giving her an excellent vantage point from which to tell this very important story. I do feel it is important to read many stories and perspectives about slavery, lest we forget our sordid history, and I am thankful Hurston wrote this one. As a reader, I could tell how much time and effort Hurston put into this book. I like that she stuck to her guns and demanded that it be published as she had written it - in Koosula's dialect. Unfortunately, this delayed the book's publication for nearly 90 years. However, I can understand her insistence on this. We, as the audience, need to hear Koosula. Writing it any other way would have muted his very emotional story. I appreciated the abundance of direct quotes provided. I could almost hear Koosula speaking, and I definitely could feel his emotion. Koosula was not really black or what we'd call African American today. He was an African forever displaced in this strange land he was forced to call home. His story is a sad one. Even after being freed he, like many African Americans today, and his family were grossly disenfranchised. All six of his children and his wife preceeded him in death as a result. While I read this book on my Kindle app, I think I'd like to hear the audio version. I have a feeling an oral re-telling would be an even more powerful vehicle for this story. I am overjoyed that Common has purchased the rights and is making this into a TV movie, and I can't wait to watch it. I gave this book four stars because I felt that there was some unnecessary repetition, and I wished Hurston had given us a little more biographical information on Koosula once he was in the United States. Even so, this short book is information-filled and an important part of American history. Recommendation: This story is a must read. It won't take you long to finish it, so why not pick up a copy today? Until next time ... Read on! Regardless of whether I purchase a book, borrow a book, or am gifted one, my ultimate goal is to be honest, fair, and constructive. I hope you've found this review helpful.

Heart wrenching. His voice is clear. I feel his pain. Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay lives in his Africa homeland for 19-years before his tribe is exterminated by another tribe and he is sold into slavery. His family and village cease existence. He lives on foreign soil for three-quarters of a century and dies after his wife and four children. He remains a gentleman. I couldn’t stop reading Cudjo’s narrative, written by Zora Neale Hurston. Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay, also known as Cudjo Lewis, voiced his story so we might feel his soul. “I tellee you de truth how it was.” (page 71) "Barracoon" may be the best, if not the only, personal account of being born (1840) on “Affica soil,” trained as a warrior to protect his village, captured and sold to slave-traders, crossed the Atlantic on a slave-ship, worked on an Alabama plantation for five-and-a-half years, freed after the Civil War, helped create and build African Town (Plateau, Alabama), and died in Alabama (“Mericky soil, July 17, 1935), during the depression. Deborah G. Plant’s Foreword is best absorbed as an important book review of" Barracoon," written in a professional reviewer format, not that of an Internet reader-reviewer. If you have a choice, Plant’s review is best read after reading Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis: yes, he possessed several names)’s narrative life-story, spoken in Cudjo’s vernacular diction, gathered and written by Zora Neale Hurston (1927-31), and not published until May 8, 2018. Barracoon is presented in three parts: (Read the middle part first, if you haven't already. The dialogue between Zora Hurston, the author, and Cudjo Lewis is the most important part of the book.) • A collection of introductions about the book’s creation: Epigraph, Foreword, Introduction, Editor’s Note, Dedication, and Preface. • Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay’s narrative life-story, told to and written by Zora Neale Hurston. • Helpful, even though random, material: Appendix (Takkoi or Attako---Children’s Game, Stories Kossula Told Me, The Monkey and the Camel, Story of de Jonah, Now Disa Abraham Fadda de Faitful, The Lion Woman), Afterword and Additional Materials Edited by Deborah G. Plant [Afterword, Acknowledgments, Founders and Original Residents of Africatown, Glossary, Bibliography, Notes, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” by Alice Walker, and Reader’s Guide]. Zora Hurston was a pioneering African American folklorist who created and walked her own path in gathering and shaping important history pieces that would have been lost, had she not journeyed wherever she felt she needed to be, before important memories were lost. Not everyone was comfortable with her early-career methodology. Such makes little difference. What she left is a treasure. Read and study this book, it’s a short read of only 256 pages --- especially if you’re interested in the American (nineteenth) aspect of fifteenth -nineteenth world-wide slave trading. “Derefo’, you know, we live together and we do all we kin to make happiness ‘tween ourselves.” (page71) If Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay’s story doesn’t touch your heart and soul, what will?

An intriguing story. I haven’t finished it yet but so far so good.

Before you get into the meat of the book, you can guess it is going to be controversial BECAUSE... there are FIVE disclaimers at the beginning. 1) there is a foreword by Alice Walker telling the reader not to overreact. 2) there is an introduction by Deborah G. Plant telling the reader not to overreact. 3) there is an editor's note by Deborah G. Plant telling the reader not to overreact. 4) there is a preface by Zora Neale Hurston telling the reader not to overreact. 5) there is an introduction by Zora Neale Hurston telling the reader not to overreact. THEN there is an afterword that addresses Hurston's plaigiarism and again works to calm people about the black-on-black violence described in the book. PHEW. After all that excuse-making, do you think there is some material in the book that contradicts the black mythology about life in Africa? This book is not a typical slave narrative. For one thing, it is not political at all. For another, it displays human nature as totally corrupt and perpetually lonely. No "noble Africans meet horrid westerners" in this book: they are all horrid. Hom much should we make of ZNH's refusal to be objective? On page xxiii, she specifically rejects the objectivity that a narrator would be expected to have, and instead calls herself a "participant-narrator." She wants to set down the "essential truth" rather than the "fact of detail" - see for yourself on page 3. That alone is no reason to reject the book, but it is interesting to me that she did not trust Mr. Lewis enough to let him speak. Instead she centered herself in the book. The author's questions on page 16 are brilliant: "How does one sleep with such memories beneath the pillow? How does a pagan live with a Christian God? How has the Nigerian "heathen" borne up under the process of civilization? I was sent to ask." WARNING TO READERS: This book documents the hellish black-on-black cruelty in the slave trade and it delves into human sacrifice among African tribes.

Book tells the story in former slaves dialect. He was never really free much suffering and tragedy story of how they ca

This is an amazing 1st hand account of the capture and enslavement of an African. I majored in anthropology many years ago with an emphasis on the impact of Europeans on African societies. I have been well aware of the participation of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the capture and sale of slaves to Europeans. Cudjo's graphic description of the slave raid on his village by Dahomey, the vicious murder and destruction of the village, and his capture was blood curdling. That he survived slavery and into the 1920s to tell his story to Zora Neale Hurston is astounding and we are so fortunate that he did. When Ms Hurston presented this book to her publishers they refused it due to it being written in a transliteration of Cudjo's dialect. She refused to change it to "proper English" and it remained un-published for years. I understood many of the facts of African slavery, but Cudjo's account made me feel some of them in my gut. i think this book is essential for those of us who are not African-Americans to begin to grasp the horror of slavery and why it still impacts us today. As it says in Deuteronomy: "visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation." In our case, we are still working to recognize and cure the iniquity in our American foundation. And it was all of our forefathers, not just my Virginia mountaineer ancestors who owned no slaves but benefitted from the economic surplus that they produced. It was the New England slave ships, and the southern plantations, and the ships carrying tobacco and cotton to Europe. It was also my mother's Choctaw ancestors who owned slaves and plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana before being forced to move to Oklahoma, some taking their slaves with them. This book should be a part of the curriculum of every high school civics class. Civics is still taught, isn't it?

WONDERFUL read. Zora Hurston was patient and thorough in her professional friendship with Cudjo Kossola Lewis. Cudjo gives us his actual experience of him and his people being slaughtered and illegally taken into captivity 50 years after the transatlantic slave trade was supposedly ended. He gives his account of being kidnapped at the hands of the African Dahomey warrior women - they'd overtaken the inside of the town while dark. He spoke of their strength and how the Dahomey men stood at the gates cutting off and collecting the heads of his people because their Dahomey chief paid them according to their literal head count - the rest of Cudjo's people taken for the Europeans. Cudjo gives us the inside look on the regular seasonal tribal wars amongst the African people and how the Dahomey chief used the slave trade to increase his own power and wealth over other tribes. We knew this happened but to read about it in such details is eye-opening. Cudjo shows the partnering of the African chief with European traders and enslavers. He also gives beautiful lessons taught through his tribe and shows the unfortunate end and bravery of his own chief. He's reveals the evil on both sides - black and white. He shows the arrogance and evils of the white traders and how a group of Africans jumped a slave driver for whipping an African woman how even after slavery there was the need to create Africa town not merely for black empowerment but because of the hatred against him and his family and other Africans like him who hadnt been assimilated into the self-hateful mentalities taught among blacks from longer enslavement; the blacks whose families had much longer been enslaved and assimilated into the servitude of whites often made fun of, bullied and ostracized Cudjo, his family and the other Africans only 5 and a half yrs or so enslaved. His experience is one that many blacks may not be prepared to hear since we black Americans have come to romanticize Africa and the way we saw those going through post slavery. Even Cudjo's christians conversion experience is interesting and unexpected yet makes sense when you see how his tribe already taught. Good and bad they are all our ancestors and teach something powerful. Zora writes the way Cudjo talks. She'd refused to change a thing. I see why. Powerful read. There's SO much in this book. It's a historical read and should be in every black child's book collection. This book will intrigue you, upset you and also make you laugh and smile in reverence. It's a must have.

I was familiar with the subject. The fact that the book was written in 1927 caught my attention. Since the book was mostly told in "Cudjo Lewis' own voice, dialect and way of talking, the publisher refused to publish it. They wanted it "cleaned up". They wanted it told from the author's point of view and in her style of speaking. She refused. Therefore the book wasn't published until recently by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust. I was familiar with Cudjo Lewis (real name Kossola). The ship "Clotilda" ( the last slave ship) brought him, along with 109 other slaves to Mobile Alabama around 1860. Actually, they were were dropped off at an area once called "Plateau". Plateau (Magazine Point) is now called "Africa Town". Slavery had been abolished and this was an illegal act. In fact, it was done in order to win a bet. He bet a friend that he could send a ship to Africa, load it with slaves and return to Alabama and sell the slaves without getting caught. He won the bet. Again, it was against federal law. I won't mention his name because his descendants are prominent members of Mobile, Alabama. Plateau (Africa Town) is in the north part of the city of Mobile, Alabama. Anyone who is in their 60's or older and native to Mobile knows who Cudjo Lewis was. He died in 1935 in "Plateau" (Africa Town) Alabama. He was born 1840 in Bante (region) West Africa. He was probably about 19 or 20 when he arrived in Alabama. Until his last day on earth, he wanted to return to Africa. He had many fond and happy memories as a child in Africa. If you read the book you will pick up on how sad he was and how he had longed to return to Africa. The ship, Clotilda, was scuttled and burned some where in the delta of Mobile Bay. It is thought to be near Twelve Mile Island. There is a concerted effort to find it and raise it. About all that is left would be the bottom of the hull, some of the metal fasteners and probably the shackles that bound the slaves. The people of Africa Town want this material to place in a local museum. Many of the descendants of these slaves still live in the Mobile area. Cudjo Lewis' descendants still live in lower Alabama. I enjoyed the book. It is told the way Cudjo Lewis told the author. It is as if he is talking to you. Bob F.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful too." death “My father say, ‘Oh de ground eats de best of everything.’ Den he weepee too." good husband "De husband what knows what is needed And gives it without asking—" "When we see a man drunk we say, ‘Dere go de slave whut beat his master.’ Dat mean he buy de whiskey. It belong to him and he oughter rule it, but it done got control of him." tree of his children have died “Our house it very sad. Lookee lak all de family hurry to leave and go sleep on de hill." His church members ask him: ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “‘Well den,’ I say, ‘You see Ole Charlie dere. S’pose he stop here on de way to church. He got de parasol ’cause hethink it gwine rain when he leave de house. But he look at de sky and ’cide hit ain’ gwine rain so he set it dere by de door an’ go on to church. After de preachin’ he go on home ’cause he think de parasol at Cudjo house. It safe. He say, “I git it nexy time I go dat way.” When he come home he say to one de chillun, “Go to Cudjo house and tellee him I say sendee me my parasol.” “‘De parasol it pretty. I likee keep dat one.’ But I astee dem all, ‘Is it right to keep de parasol?’ Dey all say, ‘No it belongto Charlie.’ “‘Well,’ I say, ‘my wife, she b’long to God. He lef’ her by my door.’ ‘Uncle Cudjo, make us a parable.’ “Den I axed dem, ‘How many limbs God give de body so it kin be active?’ “Dey say six; two arms two feet two eyes. “I say dey cut off de feet, he got hands to ’fend hisself. Dey cut off de hands he wiggle out de way when he see danger come. But when he lose de eye, den he can’t see nothin’ come upon him. Hefinish. My boys is my feet. My daughter is my hands. My wife she my eye. She left, Cudjo finish.” Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it. He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America. After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America. Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on the shore. Reading the story of Cudjo in his own words, I began to see an evident pattern. He lived in a tiny village in Africa, far from the coast. They had a society with rules and laws. Yes, it was very different from America, and in many ways would seem backward and violent, maybe even misogynistic, men having several wives, paying for them, fattening them up, etc. But their laws, though harsh, seemed to benefit everyone. If you lied, stole, even murdered, you were tried and punished as everyone watched. If you kill you will be killed. However, the tribe did not wage war, they prepared for it, but that's all. Living in peace, they raised their animals, hunted, raised crops - never having to work too hard. They used palms to make wine, babanas to make beer. They used the different leaves of the forrest to heal wounds and even preserve the dead in some cases. But their far off neighbors lived differently. They waged war on everyone, heartlessly killing indiscriminately, collecting taxes (food and wealth) from villagers they spared, who paid out of fear. They soon found that if they killed everyone in a village except the young and healthy, they could sell them as slaves on the coast. So, thats what they did. As the warring tribe traveled in comfort, being fed by all the small villages along the way (out of fear), they would arrive at Cudjo's village one day and did exactly that. They asked for their crops and wealth and when the village refused, they killed everyone and captured all the young. One reason they were able to do this so easily, is because his village safety secrets were betrayed by a man for pay from the warring king. So his GREED led to the capture and slaughter of an entire village, so the king could transport them to the coast to sell. The king's GREED led him to demand other people's wealth as payment for being spared, and so he and his village did not have to work. Then he fed his GREED by selling the captors to the slavers. And he had no problem decapitating anyone who defied him and carrying their heads around on sticks! Is this beginning to sound familiar? Seems like too many of the people in government begin to act like this. Filling their pockets by dominating the people below, causing pain and destruction without regard. We even have the same people willing to betray secrets that keep people safe, for money. Now we come to the ship owners who were willing to sail to the coast of Africa for "cargo" that they could sell back home. This story takes place after it was illegal to sail there and bring in slaves. But these people who paid for the ship to sail and the captain were all willing to break the law for their own GREED. They did not care that people cried, got sick were separated from home and family, as long as they got paid. The ship in this story was about the same size as my one bedroom apartment. 116 blacks were laid in the hold for a 75 day trip. When they arrived, the slaves were sold again, to people who believed it was their birthright to own land and become wealthy and to use slave labor to do it. And when the slaves were freed a few years later, the forer owners felt nothing was owed them. Their own GREED kept them from feeling the freed slaves were owed a place to live or land. Nor did they feel it would be necessary to take on the cost to return them to Africa. But all this is the back story to his life. He was "freed" and told to go wherever he wanted to go! He was unable, as were his friends in the same situaton, to save enough after being freed to afford passage back to Africa, and of course his village would not have been there anyway. They decided to try to buy land. They rented it at first from their former owners, and did without until they were able to actually buy it. They buitl their own houses themselves, and their own church eventually. They created an African village in America, run by tribal leaders they chose. But his troubles did not stop. Other black Americans who had been here much longer, looked at him and his friends as "savages". They were ridiculed and taunted so much that his children grew up angry and combative. Cudjo was hit by a train, and tried to sue the train company, but his lawyer ran off with the money. His children died one by one, some from sickness, some from run-ins with the law, one from suicide over the despair of all his brothers dying. Cudjo even lost his wife, from a broken heart I think, at all her children dying. He had only a daughter in law and two grandchildren left. But when he talked about his wife and children it was always with such love and open pain. His stories of his home land were filled with wisdom and poetic phrases. He never learned to read or write, but I have never rread such poignant words. Here are some that touched me the most. "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. " talking about rich and poor: "When you hungry it is painful but when de belly too full it painful to

From 1927 to 1931, cultural anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston interviewed the last living former slave in the United States and prepared an account of his life for publication. The manuscript never found a taker until 2018, when acclaimed novelist Alice Walker arranged for it to be brought into the light of day. We’re deeply indebted to her for the effort. Hurston’s book offers us an eloquent and moving tale that adds heft to our understanding of our past. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” brings a personal dimension to the slave trade, the lived experience of slavery in the US, and the violent years that followed for African-Americans during nearly a century after emancipation. A slave for “five years and six months” Kossola—renamed Cudjo Lewis in Alabama—was eighty-six years old when Zora Neale Hurston showed up in Africatown (Plateau), Alabama, to interview him for the Journal of Negro History. He was, after all, the last living former slave and his story cried out to be told. Born on or around 1841 and captured by slavers at the age of nineteen, he was force-marched to the coast and imprisoned with hundreds of others in one of the many barracoons where slaves were interned before sale to white men. (The word is derived from the Portuguese and means “barracks.”) Once landed in Alabama, Kossola then lived as a slave for “five years and six months.” To chronicle his story, Hurston returned again and again over a period of three months, gradually piecing together Kossola’s heart-wrenching tale. The man had a truly remarkable memory and could summon up precise dates, names, and conversations from nearly nine decades in the past, much of which was confirmed by independent sources. The result is a gripping account that spans nearly a century of our national shame. A folklorist by training as well as inclination, Hurston carefully reproduces Kossola’s fractured English in the extensive quotes that form the basis of her account. For example, she reports him saying at the outset, “When I come away from Afficky I only a boy 19 year old. . . We come in de ‘Merica soil naked and de people say we naked savage. Dey say we doan wear no clothes. Dey doan know de [African porters] snatch our clothes ‘way from us.” There is a certain charm, and doubtless authenticity, in this practice. It’s easy to hear the man talking as you read. Sixty-seven years of oppression When Hurston interviewed Kossola, the Civil War had been over for sixty-two years. Thus, Kossola’s experience in the United States was largely that of Reconstruction and the era of Jim Crow that followed. Unsurprisingly, he and his family fell victim to some of the worst practices of the time. Kossola and his wife had five children, but she and all five were long dead when Hurston met him. One of their four sons was shot to death without warning by a deputy sheriff who had lain in wait for him at a local store. A second son disappeared one day and most likely met a horrible death as well. Kossola himself was struck by a train and injured badly enough that he was unable to work again—and one of his sons was killed in a similar “accident” not long afterward. (A court found the railroad liable for Kossola’s injury and ordered the company to compensate him, but “Cudjo doan gittee no money.”) Yet somehow he survived, lonely though he was. His church employed him as sexton. He died in 1935 at the age of ninety-four or ninety-five. The African role in the slave trade What is most remarkable about Barracoon is Kossola’s detailed account of the nighttime attack on his village in which his entire family was slaughtered and he was bound off to the coast as a slave. Hurston certainly found this surprising. “The inescapable fact that stuck in my craw,” she wrote, “was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me.” And it’s hard to overlook the savagery and cynicism of the attack by the soldiers of the King of Dahomey. As Kossola explains, Dahomey was unlike other societies in the region in that its principal income derived not from agriculture but from slaving. As Alice Walker notes in her foreword, “this is, make no mistake, a harrowing read.” The slave trade According to Canadian historian Paul Lovejoy, a specialist in African history and the diaspora, “the estimated number of Africans caught in the dragnet of slavery between 1450,” when the Portuguese brought the first large number of slaves from Africa to Europe, “and 1900 was 12,817,000.” Only 10.7 million of them survived the dreaded Middle Passage. Brazil—long a Portuguese colony—received the largest proportion of them, an estimated total of 4.9 million. A surprisingly small percentage arrived in the United States: estimates range as low as 388,000 and as high as between one and two million. Yet by 1900, African-Americans numbered 8.8 million, or nearly twelve percent of the country’s population. Kossola may have been the last living former slave in the United States, but millions of others or their immediate families had shared much of the same experience. Kossola was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1859. He was one of 110 captives from the present-day nation of Benin who constituted what was reportedly “the last black cargo” to arrive in the United States. Half a century earlier, the slave trade had been abolished in both Britain (1807) and the US (1808). In fact, the Clotilda—the ship that bore Kossola to America—lay hidden for more than two months to avoid detection by Federal authorities. In the end, the ship’s captain failed. The three brothers who were his partners in the venture “were tried in the federal courts in 1860-61 and fined heavily for bringing in the Africans.” However, they had succeeded in spiriting the slaves off to the plantations they owned in the area. About the author Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. She was a cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, and folklorist who studied at Barnard College under legendary anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University, who assigned her the task of interviewing Cudjo Lewis (Kossola) for the Journal of Negro History. But Hurston was best known to the public in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as an author. She wrote numerous novels, short stories, and works of poetry as well as nonfiction and an autobiography.

For a little over a year, I've devoted most of my reading time and review space to promotion of new (and often Texas) authors. I made the decision in the last quarter of this year to focus on reading some books on my personal to-be-read list. Barracoon: The Story of the "Last Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston was a find through an Amazon daily deal back in July of this year that I have been meaning to get back to. I took some time over a long weekend to dig in and read this amazing work of non-fiction by Hurston, who is most notably remembered for her work of fiction - Their Eyes were Watching God. Barracoon is a biographical account of the last known surviving and formerly enslaved African, Cudjo Lewis*, his capture and forced voyage in the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the Clotilda - the reported last slave ship to come to the United States from Africa. Barracoon is a Spanish word that translates to "barracks." It is the facility where Africans were held before being sold and transported into slavery. Koosula ended up in Alabama and eventually became a free man at the conclusion of the U.S. Civil War. He lived through capture, forced detainment, slavery, and the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. At 94, Koosula died in 1935. *[Cudjo was known as Koosula in the motherland, and he seemed overjoyed for Hurston to refer to him by his real name. Therefore, for the remainder of this review, he will be Koosula.] Hurston met Koosula at the request of Charlotte Osgood Mason, who funded Hurston's trips to Alabama to interview and write Koosula's story. As it happens with most biographers, Hurston developed a personal yet professional relationship with Koosula giving her an excellent vantage point from which to tell this very important story. I do feel it is important to read many stories and perspectives about slavery, lest we forget our sordid history, and I am thankful Hurston wrote this one. As a reader, I could tell how much time and effort Hurston put into this book. I like that she stuck to her guns and demanded that it be published as she had written it - in Koosula's dialect. Unfortunately, this delayed the book's publication for nearly 90 years. However, I can understand her insistence on this. We, as the audience, need to hear Koosula. Writing it any other way would have muted his very emotional story. I appreciated the abundance of direct quotes provided. I could almost hear Koosula speaking, and I definitely could feel his emotion. Koosula was not really black or what we'd call African American today. He was an African forever displaced in this strange land he was forced to call home. His story is a sad one. Even after being freed he, like many African Americans today, and his family were grossly disenfranchised. All six of his children and his wife preceeded him in death as a result. While I read this book on my Kindle app, I think I'd like to hear the audio version. I have a feeling an oral re-telling would be an even more powerful vehicle for this story. I am overjoyed that Common has purchased the rights and is making this into a TV movie, and I can't wait to watch it. I gave this book four stars because I felt that there was some unnecessary repetition, and I wished Hurston had given us a little more biographical information on Koosula once he was in the United States. Even so, this short book is information-filled and an important part of American history. Recommendation: This story is a must read. It won't take you long to finish it, so why not pick up a copy today? Until next time ... Read on! Regardless of whether I purchase a book, borrow a book, or am gifted one, my ultimate goal is to be honest, fair, and constructive. I hope you've found this review helpful.

Heart wrenching. His voice is clear. I feel his pain. Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay lives in his Africa homeland for 19-years before his tribe is exterminated by another tribe and he is sold into slavery. His family and village cease existence. He lives on foreign soil for three-quarters of a century and dies after his wife and four children. He remains a gentleman. I couldn’t stop reading Cudjo’s narrative, written by Zora Neale Hurston. Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay, also known as Cudjo Lewis, voiced his story so we might feel his soul. “I tellee you de truth how it was.” (page 71) "Barracoon" may be the best, if not the only, personal account of being born (1840) on “Affica soil,” trained as a warrior to protect his village, captured and sold to slave-traders, crossed the Atlantic on a slave-ship, worked on an Alabama plantation for five-and-a-half years, freed after the Civil War, helped create and build African Town (Plateau, Alabama), and died in Alabama (“Mericky soil, July 17, 1935), during the depression. Deborah G. Plant’s Foreword is best absorbed as an important book review of" Barracoon," written in a professional reviewer format, not that of an Internet reader-reviewer. If you have a choice, Plant’s review is best read after reading Oluale Kossola (Cudjo Lewis: yes, he possessed several names)’s narrative life-story, spoken in Cudjo’s vernacular diction, gathered and written by Zora Neale Hurston (1927-31), and not published until May 8, 2018. Barracoon is presented in three parts: (Read the middle part first, if you haven't already. The dialogue between Zora Hurston, the author, and Cudjo Lewis is the most important part of the book.) • A collection of introductions about the book’s creation: Epigraph, Foreword, Introduction, Editor’s Note, Dedication, and Preface. • Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay’s narrative life-story, told to and written by Zora Neale Hurston. • Helpful, even though random, material: Appendix (Takkoi or Attako---Children’s Game, Stories Kossula Told Me, The Monkey and the Camel, Story of de Jonah, Now Disa Abraham Fadda de Faitful, The Lion Woman), Afterword and Additional Materials Edited by Deborah G. Plant [Afterword, Acknowledgments, Founders and Original Residents of Africatown, Glossary, Bibliography, Notes, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” by Alice Walker, and Reader’s Guide]. Zora Hurston was a pioneering African American folklorist who created and walked her own path in gathering and shaping important history pieces that would have been lost, had she not journeyed wherever she felt she needed to be, before important memories were lost. Not everyone was comfortable with her early-career methodology. Such makes little difference. What she left is a treasure. Read and study this book, it’s a short read of only 256 pages --- especially if you’re interested in the American (nineteenth) aspect of fifteenth -nineteenth world-wide slave trading. “Derefo’, you know, we live together and we do all we kin to make happiness ‘tween ourselves.” (page71) If Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay’s story doesn’t touch your heart and soul, what will?

An intriguing story. I haven’t finished it yet but so far so good.

Before you get into the meat of the book, you can guess it is going to be controversial BECAUSE... there are FIVE disclaimers at the beginning. 1) there is a foreword by Alice Walker telling the reader not to overreact. 2) there is an introduction by Deborah G. Plant telling the reader not to overreact. 3) there is an editor's note by Deborah G. Plant telling the reader not to overreact. 4) there is a preface by Zora Neale Hurston telling the reader not to overreact. 5) there is an introduction by Zora Neale Hurston telling the reader not to overreact. THEN there is an afterword that addresses Hurston's plaigiarism and again works to calm people about the black-on-black violence described in the book. PHEW. After all that excuse-making, do you think there is some material in the book that contradicts the black mythology about life in Africa? This book is not a typical slave narrative. For one thing, it is not political at all. For another, it displays human nature as totally corrupt and perpetually lonely. No "noble Africans meet horrid westerners" in this book: they are all horrid. Hom much should we make of ZNH's refusal to be objective? On page xxiii, she specifically rejects the objectivity that a narrator would be expected to have, and instead calls herself a "participant-narrator." She wants to set down the "essential truth" rather than the "fact of detail" - see for yourself on page 3. That alone is no reason to reject the book, but it is interesting to me that she did not trust Mr. Lewis enough to let him speak. Instead she centered herself in the book. The author's questions on page 16 are brilliant: "How does one sleep with such memories beneath the pillow? How does a pagan live with a Christian God? How has the Nigerian "heathen" borne up under the process of civilization? I was sent to ask." WARNING TO READERS: This book documents the hellish black-on-black cruelty in the slave trade and it delves into human sacrifice among African tribes.

Book tells the story in former slaves dialect. He was never really free much suffering and tragedy story of how they ca

This is an amazing 1st hand account of the capture and enslavement of an African. I majored in anthropology many years ago with an emphasis on the impact of Europeans on African societies. I have been well aware of the participation of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the capture and sale of slaves to Europeans. Cudjo's graphic description of the slave raid on his village by Dahomey, the vicious murder and destruction of the village, and his capture was blood curdling. That he survived slavery and into the 1920s to tell his story to Zora Neale Hurston is astounding and we are so fortunate that he did. When Ms Hurston presented this book to her publishers they refused it due to it being written in a transliteration of Cudjo's dialect. She refused to change it to "proper English" and it remained un-published for years. I understood many of the facts of African slavery, but Cudjo's account made me feel some of them in my gut. i think this book is essential for those of us who are not African-Americans to begin to grasp the horror of slavery and why it still impacts us today. As it says in Deuteronomy: "visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation." In our case, we are still working to recognize and cure the iniquity in our American foundation. And it was all of our forefathers, not just my Virginia mountaineer ancestors who owned no slaves but benefitted from the economic surplus that they produced. It was the New England slave ships, and the southern plantations, and the ships carrying tobacco and cotton to Europe. It was also my mother's Choctaw ancestors who owned slaves and plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana before being forced to move to Oklahoma, some taking their slaves with them. This book should be a part of the curriculum of every high school civics class. Civics is still taught, isn't it?

WONDERFUL read. Zora Hurston was patient and thorough in her professional friendship with Cudjo Kossola Lewis. Cudjo gives us his actual experience of him and his people being slaughtered and illegally taken into captivity 50 years after the transatlantic slave trade was supposedly ended. He gives his account of being kidnapped at the hands of the African Dahomey warrior women - they'd overtaken the inside of the town while dark. He spoke of their strength and how the Dahomey men stood at the gates cutting off and collecting the heads of his people because their Dahomey chief paid them according to their literal head count - the rest of Cudjo's people taken for the Europeans. Cudjo gives us the inside look on the regular seasonal tribal wars amongst the African people and how the Dahomey chief used the slave trade to increase his own power and wealth over other tribes. We knew this happened but to read about it in such details is eye-opening. Cudjo shows the partnering of the African chief with European traders and enslavers. He also gives beautiful lessons taught through his tribe and shows the unfortunate end and bravery of his own chief. He's reveals the evil on both sides - black and white. He shows the arrogance and evils of the white traders and how a group of Africans jumped a slave driver for whipping an African woman how even after slavery there was the need to create Africa town not merely for black empowerment but because of the hatred against him and his family and other Africans like him who hadnt been assimilated into the self-hateful mentalities taught among blacks from longer enslavement; the blacks whose families had much longer been enslaved and assimilated into the servitude of whites often made fun of, bullied and ostracized Cudjo, his family and the other Africans only 5 and a half yrs or so enslaved. His experience is one that many blacks may not be prepared to hear since we black Americans have come to romanticize Africa and the way we saw those going through post slavery. Even Cudjo's christians conversion experience is interesting and unexpected yet makes sense when you see how his tribe already taught. Good and bad they are all our ancestors and teach something powerful. Zora writes the way Cudjo talks. She'd refused to change a thing. I see why. Powerful read. There's SO much in this book. It's a historical read and should be in every black child's book collection. This book will intrigue you, upset you and also make you laugh and smile in reverence. It's a must have.

I was familiar with the subject. The fact that the book was written in 1927 caught my attention. Since the book was mostly told in "Cudjo Lewis' own voice, dialect and way of talking, the publisher refused to publish it. They wanted it "cleaned up". They wanted it told from the author's point of view and in her style of speaking. She refused. Therefore the book wasn't published until recently by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust. I was familiar with Cudjo Lewis (real name Kossola). The ship "Clotilda" ( the last slave ship) brought him, along with 109 other slaves to Mobile Alabama around 1860. Actually, they were were dropped off at an area once called "Plateau". Plateau (Magazine Point) is now called "Africa Town". Slavery had been abolished and this was an illegal act. In fact, it was done in order to win a bet. He bet a friend that he could send a ship to Africa, load it with slaves and return to Alabama and sell the slaves without getting caught. He won the bet. Again, it was against federal law. I won't mention his name because his descendants are prominent members of Mobile, Alabama. Plateau (Africa Town) is in the north part of the city of Mobile, Alabama. Anyone who is in their 60's or older and native to Mobile knows who Cudjo Lewis was. He died in 1935 in "Plateau" (Africa Town) Alabama. He was born 1840 in Bante (region) West Africa. He was probably about 19 or 20 when he arrived in Alabama. Until his last day on earth, he wanted to return to Africa. He had many fond and happy memories as a child in Africa. If you read the book you will pick up on how sad he was and how he had longed to return to Africa. The ship, Clotilda, was scuttled and burned some where in the delta of Mobile Bay. It is thought to be near Twelve Mile Island. There is a concerted effort to find it and raise it. About all that is left would be the bottom of the hull, some of the metal fasteners and probably the shackles that bound the slaves. The people of Africa Town want this material to place in a local museum. Many of the descendants of these slaves still live in the Mobile area. Cudjo Lewis' descendants still live in lower Alabama. I enjoyed the book. It is told the way Cudjo Lewis told the author. It is as if he is talking to you. Bob F.

This incredible book, which has a beautifully written foreword by Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, was almost 90 years in the making. Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted writer and anthropologist who was an important literary force in the Harlem Renaissance movement. Her best known work, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was written and published in 1937, so the appearance of this work of hers at this point in time was like a heaven-sent gift to me. It is a short book, and can easily be read in one sitting, but I wanted to savor every word and I found myself slowing down just to take it all in. Make no mistake: this is a difficult book to read. This book relates the atrocities of slavery unlike any other description I have ever read. It tells the story of one man's experience of being ripped from his life in West Africa and brought here to be sold as a slave. But this is not just any story of the life of a slave. In the late 1920s, Hurston traveled from New York to Mobile, Alabama to conduct a series of interviews with Cudjo Lewis (whose African name was Kossola) who is believed to have been the last surviving African of the last American slave ship, Clotilda. Hurston tells the story as he told it to her, in his own dialect, which authenticates the story. Infused into the narrative are Hurston's own words and remembrances of her meetings with him, which include his gardening and preparing food. As Deborah Plant explains in her introduction, "Hurston does not interpret his comments, except when she builds a transition from one interview to the next....The story Hurston gathers is presented in such a way that she, the interlocutor, all but disappears. The narrative space she creates for Kossola's unburdening is sacred." The title of the book, Barracoon, comes from the Spanish word "barraca" which means "barracks" or "hut", referencing the crude structures in which the Africans were kept after their capture in Africa, before the transatlantic journey. This book is at once heartbreaking and uplifting, because it is a testament to the human spirit in the face of indescribable adversity.

I watched the National Geographic show regarding the Clotilda. It was fascinating, I ordered the book and was disappointed with it because there were no letters or pictures in the book like on TV. Where can I get a copy of that book?

This is a book that I think everyone should read in order to better understand US history. This first hand account of A person being taken into slavery is heartbreaking, but also a testy to the human spirit.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ (2018) is Zora Neale Hurston’s interview in 1931 with the last known surviving African of the last American slave ship, the Clothilda. The words of Oluale Kossula – called Cudjo Lewis in America – are in his own vernacular, with accompanying notes. Oluale Kossula, from west Africa, is 95 years old when Zora Neale Hurston interviews him over a period of three months. Captured in 1860 at the age of 19, fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States, Oluale Kossula (Cudjo Lewis) was a slave in Alabama for five and a half years until his emancipation. From the pre-dawn raid in his village, to incarceration in the barracoon (slave shed) waiting for selection by American slavers, the sea voyage to America on the last ‘Black Cargo’ ship, his time in slavery, to his life after emancipation at the end of the Civil War, Kossula spent much of his life in ‘a sequence of separations.’ He feels more for others – his parents, family, friends, and other slaves – than he feels for himself. His life as a slave is book-ended by his times of freedom. He tells of his ancestry first, and the Kingdom of Dahomey (present day Benin). And he tells of his freedom, as he begins to create a community and a family after years of slavery. But all the time, he talks of his enduring loneliness for Africa and a true culture. The transcript of the Kossula interview is surprisingly short, considering that the interviewer spent three months with him. I wanted to know more about him and his family, and his hopes and aspirations, the African and American histories and times he lived in, and his legacy lessons. His words are important – not only because this work has never been published before, and not only because Kossula was the last surviving slave at the time, but because the account is honest and true, simple and complex, personal and historic, tragic and philosophical, invaluable and powerful.

I loved everything about the overall story. From home to America. In his original dialect. Sad but full of humanity.

Gives us a look into slave life of that time and everything they endured. Thks for telling their story. Regards to the families

Lots of information

Wonderful narrative on a life well lived. A man from Africky. It encouraged me, made me sad, made me proud.

Gripping account of an ugly period of world history. Very well written, complaints about the vernacular that Hurston employs notwithstanding. Well worth the time.

Despite its brevity, this book is a difficult read. Most readers know and appreciate Zora Neale Hurston for her contributions to black fiction. But, in an earlier phase of her life, Hurston was a student of ethnology under the mentorship of Dr. Franz Boaz and Dr. John Woodson. She conducted interviews for these professors in the deep South with former slaves, one of whom was the same man who is the focal point of BARRACOON. With her initial written interview with him in 1927, only about 23% of the original manuscript was Hurston's while the rest was plagiarized from other sources. Previous to that, Hurston had been found to have "fictionalized" much of an ethnographic paper on Voodooism. Both of these incidents give this reviewer pause to give this work a glowing endorsement. Even though the editor in the "Afterword" makes a rather weak case that BARRACOON is primarily the work of Hurston and is non-fiction, given Hurston's past history, one has to wonder. What is this work: a memoir, a work of fiction, or a work of historical ethnography? Cudjo Lewis, African name Kossila, was born in 1841. He arrived to the South on the slave ship Cotilda in 1860. The circumstances, as he related to Hurston, of the capture, eradication, and ultimate sale of the Yoruba tribe to which he belonged, by the ruthless King of Dahomey and his warriors, was absolutely brutal. The butchery is difficult, but certainly necessary to relate. The huge role that African tribes played in the deaths, capture and enslavement of their fellow Africans was a shock to Hurston as it will be to most readers. The narrator, Cudjo Lewis is an uneducated man who speaks in his own idiomatic dialect. At times it is difficult to understand what he is trying to say, but what is conveyed (either by him or Hurston?) are many important aspects of this former African slave: he misses his native land continually, with mixed success, he tried to create a community of freed Africans at the end of the Civil War in Alabama named Africatown , his children, born as freedmen, had a hard life and preceded their father in death, he mixed Christianity with a form of African religion, and most importantly, he felt himself a man without any country. Suddenly, at the end of the book, the narrative breaks off and the reader is left to wonder what happened to Lewis's and Hurston's relationship in the years ahead. This rather abrupt end contributes to the unsettled nature of the entire work and adds to the previously asked question: what type of literary work is this?

Born in 1841 to the Yoruba people in West Africa, Kossola told the story of how he was captured at age 19 during a brutal massacre at his village by Dahomian warriors and put on a slave ship. He was interviewed in his old age in 1927 by Zora Neale Hurston whom he trusted with details of his life that he hadn't given to any other interviewer. Kossola was, then, the last known survivor of the last slaveship that arrived in America before the Civil War, and he was lonely in his old age, his wife and children having predeceased him. He recalled many details of daily life and culture in his original home in Africa although he had lived for 67 years in America. He described his dual identity as “Edem etie ukum edem etie upar”: One part mahogany, one part ebony. Insightful historical commentary was provided by the current editor, Deborah G. Plant, bookending the interview transcription, and Alice Walker's helpful foreword gives a frame to help understand the impact of this narrative: "It resolutely records the atrocities African peoples inflicted on each other...This is, make no mistake, a harrowing read. We are being shown the wound....And we have suffered so much from this one [lie]: that Africans were only victims of the slave trade, not participants." Kossola also suffered at the hands of white people — having been enslaved until the end of the Civil War, lived under Jim Crow, and had a young son killed by a policeman — but this narrative is more heavily weighted toward his memories of Africa and how his sense of himself as an African impacted his life in America. Many of his traumatic memories are gruesome. All of his retelling is frank. A lot of thought has surrounded the curation of Hurston's interview manuscript over the years, and its publication today will surely be of great interest to many.

Seminal. As important as The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Equally important is the Author's story and the story of what ti took to get this volume to print as it is. Cudjo Lewis.

The us of Kossola's language was ingenious. The attempt to provide a verbatim narrative from an 80 year-old seemed a daunting task, but Zeta's social skills shined incredibly.

A wonderfully told piece of our history that adds emotion to a time I personally, knew little about. I didn't know that the import of slaves had been outlawed nearly sixty years before the Civil War, which today seems unnecessary, considering it would have phased out naturally as it was brought to the attention of the American people. I didn't know that there was an annual war between the African Tribes, where the winner would behead the old people and sell the young people to the white slavers, who would then sneak the slaves into the Southern States. I didn't know that the slaves were packed onto ships of only 80+ feet in length for months at a time. 100+ people on that size of a boat would make for horrid conditions. Sometimes the people kidnapped Africans would be stacked on top of each other for days at a time, only brought out to keep them from losing their ability to even stand up. I found the colloquial language hard to understand in places, but overall, I understood what Cudjo was talking about. His loss of his children was just more misery heaped upon a man who'd already been through more than most people could handle--yet he thrived and still had hope in his heart and found meaning in life. A worthwhile book to read--short and full of emotion--and a history we need to remember.

I read this before I saw the Nat Geo program about the Clothida and it is a rich resource of people who worked to establish their own community, never forgetting their past.

I love everything about this book! The man on the cover is my ancestor “Cudjoe Lewis “ so yes, I am excited!

This book gives a real look at the last slave ship to bring people here from Africa. It's the story of the process more than the actual 5 years of slavery. The story of Cudjo in Africa before he is enslaved is a great look at the past. Read the notes as you progress into the book, it clarifies and amplifies the story. A must read in my opinion.

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time. And I’m so glad I finally did. It is very short and like everything Zora Neale Hurston writes, it lovingly tells the story of Cudjo Lewis and his gruesome kidnapping from Africa and transport to post-bellum America. His journey included a long stay in the barracoons before boarding a ship called the Clothilda for an illegal trans-Atlantic crossing into slavery. Cudjo’s story depicts the violence and racism faced by the Africans who struggled to make their home in America. There are a number of appendices at the end of the book. Some of them include African folktales as related by Cudjo to Ms. Hurston from his childhood. Do not miss the essay by Alice Walker, Finding Zora Neale Hurston, which is re-printed in its entirety. It’s a moving piece and adds so much texture to Ms. Hurston’s last years.

I always felt that I knew little about how slavery began. This book is explaining how and why.

History

It's something I've searched for as we travel into the future. Knowing what we've been taught, what is actual fact is simply amazing. Most never know truth. The finding, saving and publication is a miracle alone. Knowing that Zora Neale Hurston took this journey, I did not know the story of this particular book. I knew she’d interviewed him. We are lucky someone saved her house from burning, saved the journals and pushed until they were published. The story is in the book, it's worth gold to me. I also bought and sent to a friend who needs more knowledge on how we actually got here as African, now American slave (descendants). It's an important read.

An incredibly detailed first hand account of slavery. Well written, full of real-life detail. The role of warring tribes in capturing weaker tribes, immediately killing the old and very young, marching them to the coast in chains, and selling the healthy survivors to Muslim slavers, who collected them in the barracoons, and sold them to white slavers for sale in the Americas (most went to South America and the Caribbean Islands). The courage of slaves surviving the Atlantic crossing, not knowing what was going to happen to them (a popular rumor among captives was that the whites were going to eat them - pretty ironic because the whites believed that they were cannibals) , unable to speak the languages of the mixed tribes stacked in three level platforms like wood in the ship's hold, with dysentery, diarrhea, dehydration, and other diseases, and then making a life as a slave, under constant threat of violence, with no recourse, in America, never fails to blow me away. I would have given up on the ship and prayed for death. Any African American descendant of these people should be very proud of their ancestry. They come from incredible stock.

Fascinating first-hand account of a slave's experience, from his capture and enslavement to his life as a free man, transcribed by Zora Neale Hurston. Cudjo Lewis' story is a heartbreaking nightmare, yet he is able to remain at peace. It is truly remarkable and admirable. The audio book is such a pleasure to listen to.

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I most enjoyed this when I am learning about Zora's process. The dialect is hard. I wanted to hug Cudjoe through the pages though. I do wonder what would have happened to Zora had she listened to her editor and been less the anthropologist when writing this book. She still might have been dogged by people like Richard Wright who wanted her to showcase a certain kind of blackness, but this is such a historical piece of worth she might have survived the coming scrutiny. Too bad the world including black America wasn't ready to hear about slavery in the manner that it is presented here. I most enjoyed knowing that Zora saw the intra-group conflict embedded in the diaspora. Slavery in the Americas is hardly slavery in Africa, but the impact may have been just as brutal. This dynamic was obviously hard for her to digest and why not? Still so much through which to sort even now if we consider Chicago's South Side and other settings where we see the greatness of what it means to person of color alongside great room for improvement with community in mind.

There were always hideous truths behind the enslavement of Africans, but what this book made me even more aware of was how horribly lonely and heartsick these people must have been to have their home, their families, all they've ever known ripped away from them as they were shipped to a land where their lives became nothing more than 'things' to the white slaver who used, abused and discarded them in such an unbelievably cruel and nightmare existence. I never thought of it before...the loneliness. The aloneness. I always felt/thought that slavery and what the white people did to the Africans was ugly and cruel and inhuman, but this just flushed all that out and made it even worse. I can imagine the cruelty; I can't imagine the agony of aching for your loved ones and your land. And reading this in his own words, the way Hurston respected and told his story cut right through to the soul. It opened my heart even more to the agony of these people. And the shame of this country.

An excellent personal account of the life of Kossula the slave and the struggles of the newly freed Negroes. If it doesn't make you cry somewhere in the story then you don't appreciate the suffering of this man and many others. I highly recommend reading this account. Also include the autobiography of Frederick Douglass in your readings. The reason I gave four stars was the non-narrative material and editorializing by Deborah Plant. Her knowledge of history is quite shallow considering her view that American slavery was the worst tragedy in human history. Considering slavery has been with us since the beginning, including all cultures, there is nothing particularly unique about the American version. Across all time slavery has been a blight with unimaginable suffering. Add to that all the other human suffering under the Khans, Maos, Stalins, Hitlers and Islamic caliphates her view that American slavery was the worst is an insult to the 100s of millions who suffered in relatively recent times. Today slavery and female subjugation is still quite common in many religiously strict countries. This book speaks for all who truly suffer under subjugation.

Great condition, great price, and fast shipping. Perfect trifecta.

Nothing can compare to reading a first-hand account of history, let alone that of one of the most defining institutions in American history - slavery and the slave trade. For anyone who loves Zora Neale Hurston it's a must because her body of work is still being discovered. It reads like an interview, and just takes a couple of hours to read cover to cover. Highly recommend this small volume for Neale Hurston fans or for those looking for more primary source history to uncover the stories of Africans who, against their will, undertook this terrible journey. Stories of people who were born in Africa and endured slavery long enough to experience "America" in their latter years are so rare, so the part of the story that takes place in Africa is particularly enlightening. Primary source accounts of the slave trade on African shore (in English, at least) seem to be more rare. So the historians and African history buffs will also be interested in that aspect.

It was most interesting to read of Zora Neale Hurston, her genuine interest in this part of our history. She understood Cudjo Lewis and could relate to him in a way that few people would be able to. She treated him with the respect he deserved.

Beautifully written. As was her intention, the author recorded Mr. Lewis' story in his dialect, and it was totally readable but had none of the feeling of patronization the writings of Joel Chandler Harris or Samuel Clemmons did. I wish there had been more of his story told, but I understand the enormous effort she expended to get this much.

Barracoon is hard to read for two reasons: the author's style is from the early 20th Century and the use of vernacular makes reading hard. However, the author took great pains to standardize and annotate the vernacular so it's about as easy as it gets to be read. Without the vernacular, the book would lack veracity. What we have is the story of one of the last slaves imported from Africa, brought here long after importing slaves was illegal. It is a very personal tale of an old man interviewed about his young life. Along the way, you learn a lot of disquieting facts about slavery, the life of a slave, the reconstruction, etc. As with all subjects like this, what you 'know' crumbles in the face of a true account. You will not regret reading this book.

The very first part describes the people backing the smuggling voyage, the voyage itself including the purchase from the tribal king, and events after. But briefly so. Then there is a long section of recounting interviews with the former slave who was one of those brought over on the ship, and his life events during and mostly after slavery. This is very hard to read because the author decided to write in his dialect, which is dense and at points is almost a patois. At a little over the 50% mark in the book it switches to a sort of afterward by the modern editor (the author wrote the first part in the 1920s). That is where we learn the background of the original writing, and the fact the author plagiarized large parts of the work. Then a lot of references. Worth a skim, but it is hard to read and no real deep meanings or truths are exposed. For those interested in the smuggling voyages, the Amistad revolt books would be better.

I learned some things I did not know before reading this book. I am never done being amazed at the ruthless disregard for human life plantation owners and their paid associates had for the slaves. Even after slaves were free they weren’t safe from the whimsies of these same barbarians. The scope of those who could regularly oppress them actually increased to the common white folk who did not own or work on the old plantations. It’s amazing this man lived to such an old age. It’s sad he had to be so lonely in his last years when he should have had several adult children and grandchildren to keep him company. So sad that his first family and life were stripped from him when he was torn from all he knew and brought to America and then again in bits and pieces after he was freed from slavery. A book to be recommended.

While this story is compelling, I found out after reading it that the material was plagiarized from "Historic Sketches of the South", by Emma Langdon, written in 1914. Langdon's book was based on her own interviews with a survivor of the last ship of Africans brought to America as slaves, in 1859. Hurston added accents, which only makes it hard to read. I suggest that readers first read Langdon's book. It also reviews the history of slavery, though some comments could be considered racist. It is an interesting, and heartbreaking story.

The golden voice of Robin Miles narrated the audiobook, and she was superb. Ms. Miles handled the emotional weight and pathos of the story with pitch perfect precision, and made the linguistic patois understandable and musical. The story itself should be read in middle/junior high schools in the U.S. so young people may begin to appreciate the devastation that the Atlantic Slave Trade wrought, and continued to wreak through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, redlining, zoning, racial covenants, etc., and continues to blight and destroy today. Zora Neale Hurston knew the importance of the story she was telling, and I thank her for sharing this vital piece of American history with us. I am going back through the kindle version to absorb more and sit on it for awhile.

This is a must read for anyone. This book gives you the story of how the slave trade worked from the mouth of a victim and survivor of both slavery and the Trans-Atlantic passage from Africa to the United States. It is a harrowing read, but difficult to put down. This book put me in touch with my roots and gave me a sense of pride I didn't have before in my ancestral history of slavery.

Looks like someone made the book in their house without professional material. The pages were uneven and the edges were rough. Like when you made your own book in elementary school by taking a piece of construction paper, folding if into 4s, cutting, and binding.

This is the story of arguably the last slave brought to America, told by the slave (Cjudo Lewis, or as he was born, Oluale Kossola). And he has an absolutely remarkable memory, as he remembers his experiences in Africa and how he ended up in America like it was yesterday. It is predictably sad, enraging, and at times inspiring. It's quite short and has quite a bit of "scholarly" material, as it posits itself as an anthropological study. But it's a great read, and a reminder that we still live in AmeriKKKa... the land of white men wherein said white men persecute everyone else. To this day. In 2019. Less than 100 years after the last slave passed away. #BlackLivesMatter 8/10

Fascinating but very sad story of Cudjo Lewis. He was taken prisoner at age 19 after a rival state attacked his African town. He and others were sold to an American ship captain who brought them to Alabama as slaves in 1860, long after slave trading had been outlawed. The author traveled to Alabama to interview him in 1927. Definitely worth reading.

Written in the vernacular make this book is hard to read it's also very graphic and telling but I feel it worth checking out. There were stories in there that I had long forgotten - like the fact that fellow black Africans also participated in the salve trade process. Most like to save themselves or just purely out of greed and power. It dishearting to read but it's worth knowing. If you're a Zora Neale Hurston fan check it out if you're not, check it out anyway.

This book is a magnificent and horrible read. The incredible stories as told by Kossola are both captivating and horrific. The recounting of being captured, the constant suffering, the struggles of being freed in a foreign country without land, without a house.... All woven together masterfully. This book is not only an important facet of our own history simply by being a first hand account, it is immensely important as a way to open our eyes to our own past and relive it through Zora's amazing wording. The importance of this book being published cannot be underestimated and I am truly grateful to the many scholars that dedicated so much of their time to not only reviving the manuscript, but to also fact check everything they could. I am truly thankful to have run across this book and I will never forget Kossola's words of love, longing, and tragedy.

There is nothing quite as powerful as a first-person narrative of history. This book is important for understanding how Europeans and American colonizers were able to exploit African tribal conflicts in order to feed the slave trade. I am no expert in the history of the slave trade, but this dynamic was totally unknown to me before reading this book. Zora Neale Hurston was quite a remarkable person in her own right, and here she took the time to get to know her subject, gain his trust, and get his story.

It is great to finally be able to read this. Two stories in one with the narrative of Cudjo Lewis recorded by Ms. Hurston, and also the story of the book itself written in 1930s and only widely available now. It is haunting that a man captured in Africa and brought to the US as a slave was still alive in the 1930s - slavery was not really that long ago. Though he longed for Africa his whole life, it is good that his years of freedom outnumbered his time of slavery and that through Hurston his story was preserved. There has been some criticism of Ms. Hurston's choice to present the narrative in dialect. I thought it was helpful to the story if a little overdone (no need to change every "th" to "d" and every "ing" to "in").

I like the way the stories are told.

A fascinating recollection of the last living slave who was captured in Africa, traveled the middle passage, and sold in America. The writing takes getting used to because Hurston, in wanting to capture his unique accent and dialect, wrote his English phonetically but once you're used to it, this adds humanity and personality to his words. It's a quick read. More than half the pages of the book are taken up with a foreword, afterward, endnotes, etc. Highly recommended.

Kossula's voice, his being, was captured so well from beginning to end. His longing to be on "Afficky soil" and memories of his life there was heartbreaking but important to better understand what life was like in West Africa during that period in time; a time when the last known illegal shipment of slaves entered the US. Zora Neal Hurston does us all a favor by documenting Kossula's words as he spoke them. To me, it was as if each word he spoke carried the weight of his life's pain. At the same time, Kossula's new life in Africatown shows how important it is to belong and perhaps giving Kossula the space to keep going in life. Plus, there is mention of the women warriors of Africa. Something I would really like to learn more about.

This man's story is not one we hear often. In the white washed version of history that we learn in school, we are very often made to forget the very people who we committed atrocities against. This book really highlights the ways in which we have done just that. We have forgotten or never even knew. This book is a reckoning and a realization all at once.

Awesome book!! I read this book and could not believe that this man survived as long as he did? The things he saw, the things he suffered through is unbelievable, I would have died from a broken heart. When I say he lost everything, I mean he lost EVERYTHING! I love the way the author spells the words exactly the way he talks its almost like you're sitting on the porch talking with Cudjo himself. I cried through most of the book just because being black it really opened my eyes to what our ancestors went through to survive in this country. But guess what he did and so do we! Every young black person should read this book to really appreciate where we've come from and where we need to go from here.

Wow! Are we blessed to have this piece of history? Kossola's life story is heartbreaking. The way he describes his early life in Africa to his later years as a free man in America... It's just awe-inducing. We are so lucky to have this invaluable account of a life that has experienced so much in this world. Ms. Zora Neale Hurston scribes this story with such care and allows it to be told in its authenticity, and I am forever thankful. Wow.

I read this book with the idea that I would read an actual account from a former slave of his imprisonment into slavery for five years. This book "lightly" touched on the subject of a man being taken from his former land and indoctrinated into a horrific system of servitude. It went as far as implying that his master treated him with the utmost respect and held regards for his opionions. Aww c'mon. To whom was this editor's version written to appease? Slavery was not good, decent nor a respectable act. The book focuses,in depth,on his capture by the Dahomey tribe and the horrific acts that ensued. There are moments of compassion as Kossola recalls his life at home in Africa and his treatment in America over the years. The lawsuits, aquiring of land and adjustment to a new-accelerated racists-society. The book goes as far as mentioning the devisiveness amongst the Black Americans and Africans. The afterword was a mixture of biased accusations from credibiltiy to plagiarism. Albeit, this was Hurston's first in depth sponsored project; there seems to be lots of unaswered questions of her financial treatment supporting this project.The lack of payments, dishonored promises of financial gain and her attempts to achieve guidance from Langston Hughes were not awarded. I, for one, truly do not find this book to be a thorough version of what Zora Neale Hurston had written about Kossola(Cudjo) in her original transcripts. I found it to be a potluck filled with questionnable holes. If Miss Hurston was alive today...she'd probably say: This-in whole- is not the work that I originally presented to the publishers. There seems to be lots of editorial liberty induced in this version. If I could give this book 2 1/2 stars...that would be my final rating.

I bought and read this book because I was intrigued to know about the story about the last living enslaved African and his experiences. This was the first book I had read by Ms. Hurston and it will be the last. She and Mr Chemo Lewis changed me for the better.

To read this book you need to be ready to eavesdrop on two people chatting about life in the way we sometimes do--when we sit on a porch or in a quiet place and let our conversation ramble here and there. The reward of eavesdropping on this particular conversation between Zora Neale Hurston and Barracoon is hearing Barracoon, taken in slavery as a young man from his home in Africa, as he describes his joys, trials, griefs, and abiding love of his birthplace. Barracoon shared these things with Hurston in the 1920's. This book ,published recently ,was originally rejected for publication. In todays world it is a unique look at what story the black cargo brought with them .

Zora Neale Hurston's fascinating and historical book gives us insights into the horrendous middle passage as she interviews and writes about the last living (at the time) African who survived the middle passage. He was brought to American in 1865, or thereabouts, as the War Between the States was ending. The detailed account of how he was captured in Africa by other Africans and survived the murder, beheadings, cruelty, while being imprisoned in a "barracoon," which is a slave fort, on the western coast of Africa, is something most people have no idea of.

This book raised my consciousness level more than anything I'ver ever read historically and absolutely impacted my thinking. It has made me a better person.

How can one "love" the story of humans murdering their fellows for the purpose of capturing men and women to be sold into slavery. The reminiscence of Cudjo Lewis is powerful and shows much of what's best about humanity. Despite all he endured, all he accomplished, and all the love of other Africans, the family he built and connections in America, he still wished he could return to his homeland and say that he lives. The discrimination he experienced from Black Americans - born here into slavery - against him and his kind as Africans has modern echoes in communities where immigrants from both East and West Africa have settled. I'm so glad this book has finally come to light!

It was painful to read. America and the world should be ashamed of what they did

Zora Neale Hurston's fascinating account of Cudjo Lewis's tragic life brings an important perspective to the history of slavery in the United States. Lewis was apparently the last surviving former slave to have endured the Middle Passage who could remember his life in Africa. Hurston was the brilliant writer who talked with him, built a relationship and managed to get his story. It's hard to.understand how this incredible story could have gone unpublished for so many decades. Kudos to the editors and publishers for finally allowing readers to experience Cudjo Lewis's words and to hear them in the vernacular that Hurston insisted on preserving to bring the sound of his voice to life.

This book was very moving and a quick and easy read. Reading about this man who's life was totally taken from him and having him put into this strange, new place where he didn't speak the language or know anyone, made this horrible institution of slavery come to life. You could feel all he must have been feeling and going through. A wonderful read for anyone.

It is understandable it took so long for Barracoon to choke out. Hearing the story of Vickie in his voice is refreshing and a beautiful folkloric style that is set once original. Sorry that Ms. Thurston had to lose her academic credentials to gain the freedom to bring it to life, then we're all beneficiaries of her sacrifices. I'm grateful to Deborah G. Plant for the justice of her editorial work. The notes after the story were very illuminating. I was rooting with the idea of where they could have been placed for bigger impact.

I thoroughly enjoyed Barracoon. It is an interesting look into an aspect of slavery. What caught my attention was that Kossola was taken from Africa long after the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed. To be kidnapped and sold into slavery and to long to return home and never be able to would be a heartbreak unimaginable. I’m glad I was able to hear one more of these stories of the struggles that our ancestors had to face, and shows that it is not as far removed as we like to believe.

One man's detailed memories of life in Africa, capture by Dahomey female soldiers, journey through the middle passage, and difficult life facing racism of whites and prejudice from Blacks born in America. After reading this, I think of it almost everyday day. Zora does a great job in presenting the story of how the story was told to her. I am shocked that this wasn't published when she wrote it. I imagine it didn't get published because some whites talked about it the book could still be held liable for their actions.

Not an easy read on several levels. The story of the last survivor of the last slave ship is one of loss and death and betrayal. Told in the words and dialect of the protagonist, the text can be hard to understand. But this is an important and in many ways, beautiful, story to read and a history that deserves to be honored with remembrance.

What people won't do for money! The ship Barracoon was built as a merchant ship in Alabama, but was always intended to buy slaves in Africa and resell them. After the voyage it was sunk to prevent the owners from being charged with slavery trading which became illegal in 1865. It was the last slave ship and the last slave voyage. Recently, the Washington Post reported that the ship Barracoon has been located. The book is a book club read.

I was hesitating - how many stars do I give the book? This edition is divided into three separate parts. The lengthy introduction gives us Hurston and her subject, Cudjo; in the middle we have Hurston's interviews with Cudjo and his captivating story; finally, there is a repetitive telling of the importance of the author, the Harlem Renaissance, plagiarism and why it might or might not matter. Really? Just Cudjo, please. His story from his youth in Africa, his horrific capture and transportation, his years in captivity, his banding together with other "Africans" where the most fascinating part of the book. Truly heartbreaking was his idealizing of a lost African home, his wish to return there and attempts to rebuild something like a community. Then his relationships with the man who bought him and brought him to America - to approach that man Maher and ask for help in providing funds to make a return to Africa is astounding. I was generally struck by Hurston's attitude towards Cudjo - she reminded me of researcher studying a lab animal. Overall, the book was a disappointment. Yes, three stars is generous.

Slavery was not so very long ago. What a find, this previously unpublished interview of the last surviving African sold by a rival tribal king, illegally brought to the American South just as the civil war began. This short book, told mostly first person by the man himself, broke my heart on every page. Of course the end of slavery was not the end of his troubles. So much cruelty. Hurston lets him tell it in his language, straightforwardly, as they share peaches. An important contribution. May we never forget that our country was built on the horror of enslavement of African Americans.

As a student of the history of my people's sojourn in this country, I found this work most effective in clarifying the period of our abduction to this "land of the free" . Kossola's yearning for his people and homeland resonated with me. It was, at times, heart-wrench g! This is not a work for the !ight reader, but for those who are willing to know--and even feel-- what it meant to be a kidnapped African who still remembered home and would not let the memory be wretched from mind!

I have read a fair amount of Zora Neal Hurston's work but I didn't discover this piece until I found it on Amazon. Very interesting and how satisfying it must have been to interview the last living slave, Cudjo Lewis. It's a pity that Hurston did not get the acclaim she deserved while alive. She is a must read in any literary class and should also be considered a historian worthy of commendation and exposure.

I loved reading and listening to this book. It was moving, impressive, and important. Kossoula's story is especially important because of his ability to survive so many brutal and devastating events throughout his life. A man with a story that needs to be shared for many more years. Reflect on his wisdom and perseverance. I also applaud Toni Morrison for her constant efforts to work and collect this major piece of history. Thank you to the editors and publishers for bringing this story to light for all of us.

Once you become accustomed to the dialect, the substance is quite interesting and unique. Cudjo Lewis’ love for Africa, his homeland, never wavers. As a true narrative by a true African, it is heartbreaking to read about their captures and separation from family. This book reveals real sorrow, real pain, real confusion that we know was suffered by all captured Africans. It also captures the reality that some Africans came from royal families A very good read!

The story was sincere but difficult to read since the english was broken. I could have finished in a day or two but it too me longer to decipher.The injustice did come across though.

So well written ( even if it was written decades ago , and our writing formats have changed since that time ) easy to understand and follow story . Great piece of history of things we didn’t know or thought of in school . Includes photos and glossary of where facts / info was used from . Highly recommend for leisure reading or for school project . Overall , a piece of history that left me in awe .

Actually, I have not quite finished the book but I already feel moved to say something. It is understandable how it came to be that Zora Neale Hurston's decision to render Cudjo's speech as an approximation of how it sounded when he talked killed her chances for having the book published in her lifetime. My belief is that if it were written today, she would have had no such problem. But I am convinced that her decision was the correct one. In fact, I cannot imagine this book being written in any other way! It is a great book.

The pamphlet didn't live up to the hype for me. Tragic story and I don't doubt the veracity. Just a really quick , sad read.

The slave experience depicted here gives an enhanced narrative to those of us raised in the ‘Roots’ Generation. The vicious tribes that butchered and enslaved their neighbors seem more evil than I previously imagined...which should give modern-day activists reason to reconsider their narrative. The sorrow captured in the phrase “My eyes Dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time.” Has haunted me since reading that phrase. Not sure this book will reach many people - but if it does, I expect it will bring about some understanding and empathy for all people.

A must-read for those wishing to explore the horrors of slavery. At same time, I urge readers to study the backstory on the authenticity of this old man's story. No matter the veracity, this is a good precursor to studying Jim Crow terrorism in which most of this gentleman's life took place. Perhaps it's not a genuine primary source because Hurston was the intermediary, but it offers a crucial view compared to WPA-era interviews conducted mostly by white people. Hurston brought the perspectives both as a trained social scientist and as an heir of enslaved people herself.

I liked the historic facts revealed that African slavery was not only perpetrated by Europeans, but Africans and others also participated in the despicable practice. Being a believer in Jesus Christ I enjoyed hearing how even something as evil as kidnapping and slavery can be redeemed by the God who created all that exists. The book was a joy to read even with the true tales of man kind's ugliness to other men. The accurately documented language and all makes this book a keeper. I hope the friend who borrowed mine returns it soon.

I tried to listen to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" years ago and couldn't finish the last bit. I find that I like this non-fiction piece by Hurston better. That's saying something, because in general, I prefer fiction. This has renewed my desire to read more of Hurton's work. Just a warning, the first CD is really additional information form the editors, I believe. However, it is good reference material to have. Just something to know if you are expecting "Cudjo's" dialect to be there from the beginning.

I really enjoyed this. Sad that there was not more detail in his life. I felt the story of his life before and after his enslavement was detailed but the story of his years enslaved was lacking. I’m sure this is because it was too painful to remember in detail. I’d have liked an afterword written by the editors to talk about what happened to Kossula after this account and some more on Hurston and how this may have affected her fiction.

This work is framed as a combination of an evocative, emotional narrative in the form of interviews with the last survivor of the last slave ship to traffic (illegally) in America and a sociological investigation of this period in history. It is important and rewarding to read through all the parts of the book, including the introductions and the supplemental material at the end. It has taken decades for Hurston’s 1931 work to see the light, and it serves as a poignant reminder of just how far we have come.

Reading this was an experience. Hurston made it feel like I was in the room with Kossola and made his experiences visceral for me. It is a must read!

I've read slave narratives. However this is the first recollection of a slave who could describe what it was like to be free in Africa and then enslaved in America. The pathos of his situation of finding that he was enslaved is heart rending. The fact that the white men in this story pulled off bringing in a cargo of slaves, after importing slaves was illegal is galling. I literally read this book in hours. I could not put it down once I started reading it.

Required reading material if you're African American and have ever wondered: well who did capture the slaves and sell them to the western world? Honest, poignant, and sobering.

Just finished this book and wow! Couldn’t stop reading it once I opened it. Cudjo, also known as Kossula, has an incredible memory of the the things that’s occurs and shares a lot of heart breaking moments with us.

I learned a lot about life before slavery in Africa and the perspective of being captured and enslaved first hand. I loved this story and I'm so glad that it was finally published. Zora Neale Hurston did a phenomenal job of keeping the words of Cudjo in his voice. I'm glad that Cudjo talked about the division between American born enslaved African's versus those born in Africa...it was heartbreaking. What was also heartbreaking was what happened to his children. Love this book and everyone should read it!

I would recommend any person to read this book. It reminded me of the talks I had with my grandfather who passed away when I was 10 years old. This work is great education and should be taught in classrooms.

60 yrs passed the 'stoppage' of slavery and 60 years after being written, Cudjo Lewis' story is finally told in his own words. For this northeastern white American, this book is an eye-opener to the tragic history of our past.

I really enjoyed Barracoon. It tells the story of an Adrican man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and brought over on the last known slave ship after slave running became illegal. He was not a slave for long before emancipation came. But he was then stranded in a strange land with no means to return home. The sad tale is told in his own voice.

This is written as an ethnographic study and is definitely one of the most comprehensive anthropological accounts of the enslavement experience from the perspective of an African rather than an American. I am happy it was finally published as it is a very useful reference. I am only sorry that it took so long and wish that Zola Neale Hurston and especially Kossola were here to reflect on this important work.

I enjoyed reading this book, as it looks at a dark time in human history from a perspective that people have tried to tell, with varying results. I appreciated them keeping the dialect spoken during the interviews and it is a shame that it took this long to bring this piece to light. As the foreword mentioned, it is easy to see why it would have made people uneasy, but it is necessary to expose all aspects of a history, in my opinion at least.

While it is true that slavery has occurred for millennia and is recorded in most ancient civilization and to our shame still exist in small regions of the world today, this first hand account of one person as a free person in Africa then having his tribe killed by another tribe and then being sold into slavery, existing in slavery for several years then existing in the reconstruction time of Alabama is both a disturbing and a necessary Look at history from a unique viewpoint

It was good to know his story and history. I learned that there was an actual African town in the United States. It too was mostly destroyed and others wanted the land. (So familiar in our black history.) No one wants the land until blacks want it or live on it. My parents were both born in South Carolina and this story lead me to believe my ancestors lives and living was somewhere in this book. I read it for a book club.

Most items were good

Awesome work!! I love how she writes in his dialect. It makes the visual so much better. I love to learn about my history and this adds to it.

Excellent story. Brilliant writing as usual from the great Ms. Hurston

absolutely heartbreaking. Zora Neale Hurston's genius shines through this short book. It's very hard to get through because it is so sad. I apologize to all Africans who came to America through the Middle Passage. America was built on the backs on slaves and slavery. This is such and important book because it IS OUR HISTORY IN AMERICA! It should be read by every single person living in America and on the planet!! It should be taught in every history class!

This is a wonderful book. I came away with completely different view of history that I thought I had understood. Highly recommend.

A important piece of history that needs to be told and retold. Slavery was one of the cruelest, if not the cruelest of all systems instituted . The African people who were brought to the new world and enslaved and mistreated is a stain that will always be with us. Slavery was a cruel and evil system. Mr. Kazoola/ Cudjoe Lewis what a remarkable man! May he and his family and Descendants rest in peace.

This book is a must read for all. It shows the heartache of a man being taking from his country and everything else that goes with a journey of that magnitude.

So much of the time we pass through this world without seeing or understanding what and who is around us. Take the time to read this account of Cudjo. How many Cudjos do you know? Take the time to know the people around you and how they have come to be with you. What is their story? Just listen.

good book to read to gain a perspective on the people involved in the slave trade from the slave aspect. You almost never hear about the how they came to be in that siutation or what they were like BEFORE slavery. Its insightful and revealing. Be warned...long foreword, editors notes, acknowledegments, citations, and about the editor take up a very significant portion of the reading.

such wisdom and understanding

I am not finished reading it. Why rushing me. Can I enjoy my time.

My son read this for our home school curriculum. We used the Audible with it and it was so worth adding to this purchase. A heartbreaking story, but told in a no-nonsense way so it didn't end up maudlin. A must-read for anyone who wants to know American history, even the dark parts.

What insight to go to Alabama to engage a person in many conversations to learn about his experiences as a slave and his transition to freedom. Using his own dialogue in the book makes it seem as if you are sitting in the room, too. Well worth the quick read.

This was very sad in many places, but puts a perspective on slavery that most probably are missing even they are students of history. Real life account and details are haunting. So glad I read this - a must read.

I read this story right before the pandemic started. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking. It is an American African’s story. Grateful to Ms. Hurston for documenting Baba Kossula’s journey.

The last living former slave taken from Africa tells his story to anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Moving, sad, alive, undeniable.

Nice! It had a little scratch on the bottom but that didn’t matter to me.

Historical evidence of the length mankind sinks to for wealth, African and white Americans. Plus, the discovery of the ship last year provides indisputable evidence of the Cotilda journey after slavery had been legally outlawed for over 50 years.

This is an outstanding book. My only complaint is that it was too short! Hurston's voice is lovely, and it's joyful to read the asides that show her character. Kossula is a remarkable presence in the book. His language and story telling carry the book forward in a heartbreaking but strangely hopeful way. This is really a book that every one in America should read.

A MUST READ FOR ANYONE VESTED IN THE STORY OF THE AFRICANS BROUGHT TO THE SHORES OF AMERICA.

Short book-but read the stories in the appendix. Perfect illustration of how little we know. Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston said it better in their introductions than I ever could. Cudjo made me aware of my ignorance. Walker and Hurston (and Cudjo) showed me there is joy - in everything - even ignorance. Thanks!

Barracoon recounts the horrors of stolen humans from Africa and their horrific human bondage in the USA! The first person narrative will invoke images of these horrors that white supremacist traders / traffickers in human flesh put upon our African ancestors! Read this and remember the story of this worst crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of greed, corruption, power, tyranny, and global spurious "white supremacy".

I haven't read this book yet. I am re-establishing my library of books by Black authyrs, especially those of the Harlem Renaissance.

Barracoon details a lot of the dynamics underlying the slave trade. The fact that coastal tribes in the kingdom of Dahomey would go in-land and raid other villages & capture young adult male & females to be bound over to slavery & sold to the white traders who came by ship. Many of the raiders were Amazon like women of prodigious strength & skill.

I’m grateful condition. Excited to read this!

For a college course

I really enjoyed this story. I felt like a lot of the information told in the book was background for when you went to read the story. While most of it was helpful, it felt a little heavy on that end of the story.

Lots of history about how he's family and his tribe lived in Africa. How the Chief that captured him lived. How he was sold to the ship's Captain. You don't see this in history books.

To truly understand the deep pain and lost slavery caused for so many that were enslaved, read this book. I read this + Homegoing and the two combined really shed so much light on what Africans went through and continue to go through because of slavery. Zora Neale Hurston has a gift for story telling, and is a gift anthropologist. I highly recommend.

Such an important book. I'm so glad it was finally published. She stayed true to his story as an anthropologist by keeping the dialect in tact, even if it was more challenging to follow at first. For anyone interested in history, race relations, or simply can relate to the loneliness of having nothing but memories and longing for another place.

I read it. It is the best of the author’s work

This long awaited book, from one of the world's greatest authors, tugged at my heart and caused me to weep. The story contains a theme of loneliness, one caused by slavery, with a yearning for one's true home. This book is one I want to purchase for all my family and friends this upcoming Christmas...seven months away. I would rate this 10 stars, if allowed.

Excellent real life account of the horrors and resilience of those who came through the Middle Passage. I love the firsthand accounting and the “giving voice” to those whose voices have been silenced. I was moved by the dignity and resolve of Oluale Kossola and the masterful weaving and research of Zora Neal’s Hurston.

I honestly have no words. This book brings over a sadness. So much of history is written yet so much has died with the ones who know.

Story is fascinating...

This was an amazing, insightful and bittersweet book. Reading Cudjo's story was very emotional for me. Here was a man that experience the entire tragedy of the slave trade in one lifetime. It's a must read for anyone interested in that time period, as well as a great book to add to your Zora Neale Hurston collection.

This book will be with me forever. My uncle kossolo. My west african uncle. I love you. Reading my history is essential. Thank you zora neal hurston.

This book is a must read by every American. The lost history that is given here of what it was like to be on the slave ships and what it was like to be kidnapped is invaluable. He also gives a very first hand history of the tribal cultures in west Africa.

Ms. Hurston recorded intimate details of the dark times of this country. She did it in the language of the subjects of her stories. She brought to light the hardships, toughness and willpower of oppressed.

Excellent account of one persons life in African and America. Really insightful. Sometimes, it sounds like he is making observations of life in 2020.

This book reads a bit like a novel but is actually more of an anthropologic study of slavery as experienced by the last of the Africans brought to North America by slave traders some of whom were Africans themselves. It is authentic and engaging. The dialect used in the book that was supposed to be a hindrance to its publication is not difficult to understand. "Barracoon" fills gaps in our understanding of what life was like within African groups from whom young people were kidnapped and enslaved. It stresses the human side of that experience without wading into current racial politics.

Beautifully written. There is supporting documentation without becoming dry. Brought to America on the last slave ship, shortly before the Civil war began and extending through many years as a free man, a fascinating insight into not only the life of the principal character, but insight into the ever changing culture around him.

It is impossible to read this and not have your heart torn asunder. How much sorrow and horror can one life hold? Read this and you may begin to comprehend how the legacy of slavery can still live.

The story is interesting but not what I expected. Very short excluding reams of introductions, prefaces, contents, resources, more comments, etc. Was hoping for more history.

Getting comfortable with the subject's dialect became easier as I read. Learning about American slavery from one of the last African captives was informative and heartbreaking. As I read this, I could see the opening credits of the movie informing the audience that it is "based on a real life story"....

The book is in flawless condition. Arrived in time promised. I could not be happier.

Gripping account from the Introduction through the end. I could not put it down. Zora Neale Hurston was a phenomenal writer and anthropologist and the account of the last surviving ex-slave to have been in the "barracoon" --dare I say-- internment holds waiting for the slave ships is unforgettable. EVERYONE in the USA should read this book.

Barracoon is a wonderful book. The narrative is so moving that while I knew the basic history I looked forward to hearing the voice of this former slave. It is such a painful story told with so much honesty. Zora Neale Hurston should be recognized as one of the great American writers of the Twentieth Century.

I learned some things about Slavery that I did not know. The only problem was the story was broken up and I would have liked to know more about the people on the “Clohtilda”

Not as in depth as I thought it would be but nevertheless, it was interesting and both easy and hard to read. It is still hard to conceptualize that humans did these things to other humans.

Loved this book and the fact that Zora Neale Hurston wrote it exactly how Mr. Cudjo Lewis relayed it to her. My heart broke for him as I heard his story. My heart broke at the sheer fact that our own people could do such a thing. I highly recommend this book!

Great read. I happened to get a first edition, love the rough edges for some reason

A little difficult to read, but worth it to, a great part of African American history. Zora Neale Hurston is a great writer.

Our country in some respects was built by those who used people like chattel and for profit. This book broke my heart and gave me a look into the life of an Afrika slave. Our country' owes so much to the descendants of those who sacrificed so much in helping to build our country.

Barracoon is a fantastic insight into the heart & mind of a survivor of slavery. The pidgin english and parallel facets of the character from the African aspect and the American Negro illustrate the dichotomy that black men experience in this society of double standards.

There was no easy life for a slave. But this slave tells of his former life in Africa, as a slave and then as a free man. Some things I feel I owe to my ancestors to read. This was one. Heartbreaking and wonderfully told.

Was so excited to read this anticipated title from Zora Neale Hurston. A riveting and heart wrenching read. Should be required reading for every history student.

This is almost two books in one and the first two thirds of are by far the best. In that first section Ms. Hurston recounts her interview sessions with the last survivor of the slave trafficking world beginning with his capture in Africa. She takes him through the Civil War, emancipation, the deaths of four of his five children and up to the end of his life. That section alone makes the book worth reading. It’s a story often told but always painful in the hearing. Let your grandchildren read it.

I like the first person account of this former slave.who reveals himself as a"likeable fellow, who only wanted to go back to his family in Afrikee. Horrific details, but a bio worth reading. Follow this book by reading "Underground Railroad", by Colson Whitehead and you have a complete picture of Slavery in America.

This book by Zora Neal Hurston is a must for everyone. This part of African and African American has been hidden far too long.

A heartbreaking first hand account of America’s original sin. A must read. May his story never be forgotten. May his voice be heard. Hard review to write because I feel word fail the gravity of this story. I feel that I cannot do it justice. Buy the book.

I could NOT put this book down! I love that Zora Neale Hurston told the story the way that she did. I could hear him speaking each word. I could feel his pain and his joy. I've recommended this to so many people! Glad we are now able to hear Kossula's story.

Brilliantly captures the dialect and emotion of the speakers. So glad ZNH did not compromise years ago just to be published.

This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read in my entire life. EVERYONE should READ THIS!!!!

This book will tug at your heart. It shines light on historic events which are largely hidden. A noble effort to reveal what really happened in early American history. Thanks for that!

Zora Neale Hurston's long unpublished manuscript recounts a series of interviews the author conducted with a man who is believed to be the last living survivor of the Atlantic slave trade. The account is powerful, moving, and heart-wrenching. Recommended for all serious readers.

The story of Cudjo Lewis is great read on providing the backstory to African American history. The people stolen from Africa were highly cultured and civilized. Cudjo Lewis' story as told in Barracoon lets us know that the Black humanity that was plundered from the African continent weren't savages and pagans.

This was my first Hurtston book and I loved her writing style. This man's life and all that he remembers in such detail is astounding. It paints a perfect picture of America throughout the novel, that's honesty we don't hear about much anymore. Read this book!

Very personable and in a style that helps a reader understand it best.

A short and intimate portrayal of an American slave's thoughts about his homeland and his predicament. The subject's quotes are done in an interpretive style that adds authenticity to the narrative.

Good read

So happy this has finally been made available.First hand account of one of the last survivors of slavery who remembered life on both sides of the Atlantic. Not a simple tale: cruelty, kindness and resilience flourished in all the environs of this remarkable life.

A very interesting book about slavery. I particularly liked that it told of other African tribes kidnapping other blacks to be sent to the US. Kind of dispels the anti-Semitic belief that the Jews were responsible for the slave trade. There is much filler before and after the actually retelling of this survivor of an awful system.

An in person interview with one of the last Africans to have been brought to the US as a slave gave me a more insightful understanding of that awful transition from home to slavery. Zora Neale Hurston simply lets Barracoon speak.

Outstanding storytelling by Mr. Lewis. Unfortunately the story ends, and the author doesn’t provide any background to what became of this gentleman and his interesting life.

I admit I had never heard of the story of the last slave ship before reading this book. The story of Kossula is incredible and heartbreaking.

It’s a short read, so short you can miss some aspects that are just incredibly insightful. I had to take my time with this one. Zora Neale Hurston was a talented anthropologist that captured the minute pieces of history that could be missed if you weren’t paying attention, but when you do, it’s life changing. Fantastic!

Interesting story. Hurston's mastery of the English language shines through at times. Illustrates the difficulty of overcoming high ACE scores due to slavery. It might benefit from a more purpose driven narrative but it's place in history is it's totally unique content.

I enjoy Zora neale hurston's work and I found this book to be interesting, sad and touching. I did enjoy it

The book was engaging and provided some details about the course of the slave trade that I certainly never learned in school. It was very thought provoking.

Zora Hurston is a great writer. Glad to add this to my collection. Very interesting story providing a lot of detail about the African actors in the slave trade and typical mercenary injustice of Americans.

I had to remind myself that this narrative was told 80 years ago throughout the book. Aside from the details of slavery and the description of his abduction from Africa, the racism is alive and current in 2018. A must read for all Americans.

Hear the story from true African gold! A commodity so sought over that free men were willing to risk life and limb to have. Ms. Hurston’s literary genius comes alive yet again as she tells this story that should be a must read for all!

It was an excellent work. Authentic, I felt a real connection to his pain, his longing to see his homeland one more time. His story is not unlike mine as I hale from the same region of Africa. My ancestors were brought here in the 1700s.

I feel this is a must read for anyone interested in a true story of slavery. It held my interest all the way through. I highly recommend this book.

A rather short read and was dismayed slightly to read of the plagiarism allegations, but only slightly. ZNH is a master of dialect phonetics.

I wish there had been more that Kossula told Hurston. It is a searing story and one I am glad was finally published. I also learned more about Hurston as a writer and anthropologist in the discussion of her work that was included in the afterword.

I cried, I got angry and I was drowned in the past. A heart wrenching story of a man stolen from his home twice over.

Zora Neale Hurston was certainly one the best writer in English of the 20th century. Her sad simple record of this last living African man taken as a slave from his native home to these shores is certainly worth reading and thinking about.