New York Times Bestseller - TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book
of 2018 - New York Public Library's Best Book of 2018 - NPR's Book
Concierge Best Book of 2018 - Economist Book of the Year - SELF.com's
Best Books of 2018 - Audible's Best of the Year - BookRiot's Best Audio
Books of 2018 - The Atlantic's Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered -
Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 - The Christian
Science Monitor's Best Books 2018** -
"A profound impact on Hurston's literary legacy."--New York Times
"One of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison
"Zora Neale Hurston's genius has once again produced a
Maestrapiece."--Alice Walker
A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the
American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the
horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of
the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade--abducted from
Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside
Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of
men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves,
Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral
part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's
firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty
years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.
In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community
three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from
his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth
with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young
writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon
that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from
his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a
barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of
the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the
Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil
War.
Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and
written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular
style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the
twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of
slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the
pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this
poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared
history and culture.
