A Story You’ll Never Forget

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston is like a vivid crazy quilt of a book. It starts out with a Foreword by Alice Walker, who states, “Those who love us never leave us alone with our grief. At the moment they show us our wound, they reveal they have the medicine. Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ is a perfect example of this.” The book includes more than simply the description of her interviews with former slave eighty-six-year-old Kossola aka Cudjo Lewis, which lasts about 94 pages of the 210 page book.

The balance of this narrative is followed by a 20 page Afterward which discusses many aspects related to the process of writing Barracoon, a controversy, and issues connected with the book. This is followed by a brief Acknowledgements. Also included is a list of Founders and Original Residents of Africatown where Kossola lived. Next is a very interesting Glossary that reads like a story itself, and the Bibliography of supporting and related books is a must read for anyone interested in resources about Zora Neale Hurston, slave narratives, and the history of slavery. Even the Notes section is readable including such information as “Hurston took photographs of Kossola as well as film footage, which can be viewed in Kristy Andersen’s PBS American Master’s Series production of Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at de Sun, 2008” which can currently be rented for $3.99 on Amazon Prime. Last but not least is a reprinted essay by Alice Walker, “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” which originally appeared in Ms. Magazine in 1975 where she “illuminates the writer’s life and work.” It is very personal account, and literally feels like Alice Walker is talking to you from across the kitchen table about her journey of discovery beginning when her plane lands in Sanford, Florida as she follows in Hurston’s footprints seeking answers to questions about her life and work, particularly her later years.

In the Introduction, editor Deborah G. Plant writes, “September 1931, Hurston contemplated Viking’s proposal: ‘The Viking press again asks for the Life of Kossula, but in language rather than dialect.’” Plant continues, “The dialect was a vital and authenticating feature of the narrative. Hurston would not submit to such revision. Perhaps, as Langston Hughes wrote in The Big Sea, the Negro was ‘no longer in vogue and publishers like Boni and Viking were unwilling to take risks on ‘Negro material” during the Great Depression.’” I understand Hurston’s strong feelings, but also found the dialect wearing on me as I read, and felt it slowed things down considerably. I do think listening to the audiobook would have made reading those passages much more enjoyable, although it can not be used to narrate the Kindle as it lacks Whispersync. Using Assistive Reader or an AI virtual voice, as I did, just didn’t cut it where dialect is concerned! The dialect does seem to create a closer emotional bond with Kossola, and exponentially amps up the empathy for his many heartbreaking life passages such as trying to imagine how it must have been for the 19 year old boy to see his village and family horribly attacked just as he is led away by the marauders to walk to the coast, into slave boats, endure a voyage where many are sick and die under horrific conditions, and be deposited in a strange land, no longer free, far from the country he knew so well, and forced to work for others. It is a story you’re not likely to forget.