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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.--Publisher's website.… (more)
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Another thing that is striking is how Kossola and others were subjugated. I felt a wave run through me when I learned that the vast majority of the roughly 13 million Africans enslaved over 1450-1900 were captured by other Africans, held in holding areas called ‘barracoons’, and then sold to white slavers when their ships came in. It’s a harrowing and very painful truth, so painful that many didn’t want to hear about it, but Hurston confronts it. In her autobiography ‘Dust Tracks on a Road’ she would later write “But the inescapable fact that stuck in my craw, was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me…It impressed upon me the universal nature of greed and glory.” I still get goosebumps thinking about it.
In Kossola’s case, his tribe was simply annihilated by the stronger Dahomey, in an area that is now part of Benin. After talking about his grandfather and father, and remembering some interesting customs of his tribe, he relates how early one morning the Dahomey warriors surprised them. The middle aged and elderly were decapitated by a group that included fierce female warriors, and the rest enslaved. To read about the brutality, and things like the Dahomey king’s house being made of skulls and bones, is not for the squeamish. It ended life as he knew it as a young man, but for the rest of his life, he longed to return to Africa.
If you’re thinking this is going to be a book describing nothing but the horrific evils of slavery and racism in America, you’ll be surprised. That’s in here of course, but it’s stunning in just how little Kossola dwells on the five years as a slave in Alabama, before one day Union soldiers simply tell him and others that they’re free. It simply does not define him or his life, and he moves on. However, keep in mind that he and others are not given reparations, not given passage back to Africa, and not given any land after they’re freed. He faces discrimination not only from whites, but also from African-Americans who have been in America for generations. He forms a town with others and names it “Africatown” (later known as Plateau, and part of Mobile today). He marries and has six children, but then sees them all tragically die over the years, so that he’s alone when Hurston meets him.
Aside from the Dahomey atrocities, then, it’s the stories of his childhood in Africa, and his children in America, that really stand out in this book. There is great honesty in that, as this was this man’s life. The Africa of his childhood is highly patriarchal. Men have multiple wives, and it’s the wives who go out and find the man new girls or women to marry. Men keep their daughters in the “fat house” for up to two years, with minimal movement so that they could gain weight and therefore be more attractive to prospective husbands. Justice is unforgiving. As Kossola puts it, there are no excuses allowed for being ‘crazy’ at the time of a crime. “If you kill anybody, you goin die, too.” And one way capital punishment is carried out is particularly brutal; the guilty man’s limbs are tied to his dead victim’s limbs, his nose and mouth touch those of the victim’s, and he is left there to wither away, exposed and inhaling noxious fumes over a few days.
The stories of his children dying, some of sickness, and others of injustice, are very sad. Several are killed under very suspicious circumstances. Part of the problem is that as the children of new “immigrants”, his boys were picked on, and had to fight throughout their lives, resulting in enemies among other African-Americans. Again, it’s just not what you might expect, that the Klan or a group of whites lynch them. On the other hand, Kossola’s story of getting first hit by a train because it doesn’t ring its bell or horn for him, and then later swindled by a slick lawyer, is infuriating. There is such quiet dignity in how he relates these stories, while at the same time he makes clear his deep emotions for what were traumatic events. As Hurston leaves him after he’s given her two last peaches from his tree, I really felt as if I were riding with her, and away from this simple man who had endured so much in life.
The editor of this book, Deborah G. Plant, should be commended as well. Her Introduction and Afterward sections are essentially reading, and her documentation is meticulous. In getting this book published, it’s clear that a lot of time and attention went into it, and the result is of very high quality. Highly recommended.
Kossola was born in West Africa in what is Benin in the present day around 1840. In 1860, he was captured by the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey and sold to American slavers on the ship Clotilda. Hurston expresses Kossola's story in his dialect, allowing him to tell his story. He talks of his childhood in Africa, capture, passage across the Atlantic, and enslavement in Mobile, Alabama. After Emancipation, Kossola and other former captives of Clotilda pooled together money to buy land near Mobile from their former captors and created a self-contained community called Africatown. There he tells stories of his marriage, children, his unsuccessful lawsuit after a train crashed into his buggy, and the death of his son, also in a train crash. Kossola became known as a storyteller, and the appendix includes a sample of his stories.
The book is an interesting piece of overlooked American history. It's also a glimpse into the ethnographic practices of the time, good and bad, as Hurston relates her visits to Kossola and the negotiations that went into planning their interviews. More than once Hurston uses terms like "primitive" to describe Kossola, a shocking judgement for an anthropologist and African American. Critics of the work suggest that parts of Kossola's narrative are fictionalized - either by himself or by Hurston - and note that she plagiarized and earlier interviewer's work in an article she wrote about Kossola. Nevertheless, this is a valuable historic document to read both for Kossola's story and as an addition to Hurston's work.
Favorite Passages:
Here is the medicine: That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going. It may be true, and often is, that every person we hold dear is taken from us. Still. From moment to moment, we watch our beans and our watermelons grow. We plant. We hoe. We harvest. We share with neighbors. If a young anthropologist appears with two hams and gives us one, we look forward to enjoying it. Life, inexhaustible, goes on. And we do too. Carrying our wounds and our medicines as we go. Ours is an amazing, a spectacular, journey in the Americas. It is so remarkable one can only be thankful for it, bizarre as that may sound. Perhaps our planet is for learning to appreciate the extraordinary wonder of life that surrounds even our suffering, and to say Yes, if through the thickest of tears. - Alice Walker March 2018
From 1801 to 1866, an estimated 3,873,600 Africans were exchanged for gold, guns, and other European and American merchandise. During the period from 1851 to 1860, approximately 22,500 Africans were exported. And of that number, 110 were taken aboard the Clotilda at Ouidah. Kossola was among them—a transaction.
Hurston’s manuscript is an invaluable historical document, as Diouf points out, and an extraordinary literary achievement as well, despite the fact that it found no takers during her lifetime. In it, Zora Neale Hurston found a way to produce a written text that maintains the orality of the spoken word. And she did so without imposing herself in the narrative, creating what some scholars classify as orature. Contrary to the literary biographer Robert Hemenway’s dismissal of Barracoon as Hurston’s re-creation of Kossola’s experience, the scholar Lynda Hill writes that “through a deliberate act of suppression, she resists presenting her own point of view in a natural, or naturalistic, way and allows Kossula ‘to tell his story in his own way.’”
Kossula was no longer on the porch with me. He was squatting about that fire in Dahomey. His face was twitching in abysmal pain. It was a horror mask. He had forgotten that I was there. He was thinking aloud and gazing into the dead faces in the smoke.
“Poe-lee very mad ’cause de railroad kill his brother. He want me to sue de company. I astee him, ‘Whut for? We doan know de white folks law. Dey say dey doan pay you when dey hurtee you. De court say dey got to pay you de money. But dey ain’ done it.’ I very sad. Poe-lee very mad. He say de deputy kill his baby brother. Den de train kill David. He want to do something. But I ain’ hold no malice. De Bible say not. Poe-lee say in Afficky soil it ain’ lak in de Americky. He ain’ been in de Afficky, you unnerstand me, but he hear what we tellee him and he think dat better dan where he at. Me and his mama try to talk to him and make him satisfy, but he doan want hear nothin. He say when he a boy, dey (the American Negro children) fight him and say he a savage. When he gittee a man dey cheat him. De train hurtee his papa and doan pay him. His brothers gittee kill. He doan laugh no mo’.
Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ is a previously unpublished work by author Zora Neale Hurston. Although she is best known for her works of fiction, in
Lewis is a born storyteller making his story fascinating, often horrifying, and poignant. Despite his age, his memory is excellent and, as Deborah G. Plant points out in the introduction, if he gets minor details wrong, his story overall matches objectively known facts. Hurston intersperses his tale with comments about their relationship, the gifts she brings him, the food they share, her growing respect for him, and his emotions as he remembers the life that was stolen from him. She tells it all with compassion and empathy.
Barracoon is an important work by one of America’s most important writers. It provides a rare and powerful glimpse at the true horrors and tragedy of slavery as experienced by someone who lived through it.
Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Amistad for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review
Most readers are probably eager to hear Kossola's perspective on his life in Africa and his forced journey to America. This was my primary want from this narrative. Unfortunately, it becomes clear far too soon that Kossola is an old man trying to resurrect memories that are seventy years old. His memory of slavery in America is more than sixty years old. I've only lived half as long as Kossola did, but already my childhood memories have begun to jumble and I cannot help but question some of what I clearly recall. I have no doubt that Kossola's recollection was accurate in some regards, but surely some of those memories have grown fragile and corrupted with time. It's also too evident that he views his upbringing through a lens of Christian teaching, which casts much of it in a negative light.
Much of this narrative is about Kossola's life post-slavery. And while this is important and interesting, it presents little new to anyone who's familiar with life in the South for former slaves. Perhaps most interesting are Kossola's records of the Clotilda and some of the finer details of living in Africatown. Barracoon is not the eye-opening riveting story I hoped for, but I'm still glad that it was published and that I had the opportunity to read it.
This brief book, tells a story that has never before been published, written by Nora Neale Hurston. It summarizes the interviews she had with Cudjo Lewis, who was thought to be the oldest slave brought
In the beginning, there is a history and summary of the narrative to follow. The story is, therefore, sometimes repetitive as the narrator explains that Hurston met with Cudjo over a period of time and elicited his story in his own words which are relayed very realistically by the reader, Robin Miles. His choice of words, his pattern of speech, his gentleness in the telling of his story reveals his devotion to his family and community and is genuinely touching and inspiring. His portrayal by Miles, will make the readers feel as if Cudjo is speaking to directly to them. At times, the reader will have to concentrate to catch his particular dialect, but that only serves to make his story more valid. Robin Miles portrayal of Cudjo and Hurston’s capture of it makes the reader feel as if they caught and presented the man and his life accurately. There is also a tenderness in the telling of it which made even more of a connection to this reader.
Cudjo loved his life in Africa and was on his way to fulfilling his life’s dream of marriage and family when he was kidnapped by warriors of another tribe. They destroyed his home and community, murdering his family and neighbors, and ended what once was his happy and contented life. A group of white slave traders in America were responsible for arranging for the boat and the circumstances that would take him across the ocean and into the world of the slave. It was a black tribe, from the Kingdom of Dahomey, though, in Africa, that brutally attacked his village and was responsible for the sale of all of the human cargo that they captured, for profit and power. Cudjo was now to become what Hurston thought of as human cargo, or as she puts it “black cargo”.
This part of the history of slavery is rarely taught in schools, and that makes this short book even more important because it shines a light on a subject needing far more illumination. In many ways, the Africans were as guilty of supporting slavery as the white slavers. However, as with drugs, if there was no market, there would not have been a slave trade. There was a market, however, and tribes did sell their brethren for the power, influence and money it brought to them. They sold them to those white men who first came from Great Britain, and then later, to the American men who arranged for the final slave ship, the Clotilda.
(Cudjo) Oluale Kossola, crossed the ocean on the Clotilda, which was refitted expressly to smuggle the slave cargo. When the ship docked, Kossola’s life ended and Cudjo Lewis’s began. The Civil War would finally put an end to his life as a slave, but the damage was done. He was ripped from his former life, and he never ceased yearning for a return to his Africa.
His description of his experiences, are presented very openly and honestly, and they are transcribed by Hurston in his own words; they paint a clear and often troubling picture of the life he led. From his lips, the reader hears the story of his life, from his days in Africa, to his life as a slave in America, and finally to his life in Africatown where he marries, has a family and ultimately becomes the sexton of his church. He lives quietly, independently, grateful for what he achieves, but sorrowful for what he has lost through the years. He always has his dignity, however, regardless of the tragedies he faced and loneliness with which he lives. His words will paint pictures of family life and family loss, of abuse and injustice, of prejudice from both the white and black American communities and also of moments of pure happiness, though they seemed few and far between. The years of his life as a slave and the years of his life as a free man knit together.
Free black Americans looked down upon former slaves as if they were savages. Many white Americans still wanted slaves and treated those that earned their freedom poorly. Some treated them fairly, as did Cudjo’s former master, keeping them on as workers after the Civil War, and paying them salaries. That, however, was the extent of his kindness. It served only his purposes, not theirs. Most of the former slaves dreamt of returning to their once contented lives in Africa, but their hopes were shattered because the cost to return was prohibitive. So, they accepted their fate and settled quietly in a place that they built and called Africatown. (It later on became Plateau).
In spite of all that Cudjo went through, he never seemed bitter, but rather he seemed to accept what life gave him and dealt with each event with grace, even when one would have expected his grief to be insurmountable and his anger to be overwhelming. Although Cudjo’s manner of speaking is not eloquent, his message certainly is delivered that way. Hearing his words, in what would have been his own voice, makes his life story that much more authentic for the reader. For this book, the audio is a wonderful experience, and I would recommend it.
Many times, I couldn’t help but wonder at the strength of character and courage that Cudjo showed in the face of all of the fear and evil he encountered. I also began to wonder about what could have been the catalyst that brought the free American blacks and the African black slaves together as one family. Free American blacks thought of the African black slaves as inferior. They did not help them in their struggles, either when they were captive or when they were free. They looked upon them as savages. Yet today, most black people clamor to be identified as African Americans, even though they may not have any history there. The book, therefore, indicated to me that perhaps what accounts for the success of Jews in America and elsewhere, is that they always helped each other, and never abandoned any members of their faith. Whenever possible, they rescued them. Perhaps that is the catalyst that united free black Americans and black Africans.
This history should be taught in public schools all across America. The stories he told and the legends he related were instructive, but also deeply troubling, because his people were defined as human cargo and, as such, were not treated as human beings for most of their lives, even when free. Hurston genuinely captured the nature of slavery and freedom in Cudjo’s world and portrayed it with integrity and candor. It is that portrayal that makes it so authentic for the reader.
This is a book that is ripe for discussion everywhere, because it brings up topics that have not been fully explored or resolved, even after so many years have passed.
What I will say is this: I thank Kossula for sharing his story with Hurston, and I wish that he could be around to see how many people are reading it. Never have a read or heard someone's personal story of their life that made
From a literary aspect ... I think in many ways, it is not my place to really 'review' a book that is someone's personal story, especially when the personal story is one that is quite unique, told orally and then written down by another party.
I don't really know what else to say other than that this book is definitely recommended reading. It is a story that will not be soon forgotten.
Cudjo tells of the wars between tribes in Africa and a very powerful African king. He also tells of how the recent Africans were treated by the slaves already established in America. The confusion after the emancipation of the slaves is also personally revealed. Cudjo married a woman who he loved very much and they had six children, all whom were killed or died before him. When he lost his wife, he was truly lost.
Cudjo was a part of a community called Africatown which was made up entirely of the last African slaves. Here they attempted to live much as they had in Africa with the same rules and customs. However, eventually, he also became a part of the American culture (becoming a Christian and a sexton at the Baptist church) although he constantly thought of his life in Africa. As Hurston interviews him, sometimes it is not clear if his memory is correct as is explained in the detailed appendix and notes.
I found the book to be very different than many of the slave stories in that it didn't dwell on the cruelties inflicted on the slaves. Rather, it looked at the life of one man who lost his culture, his religion, he future, his past, and his family. Yet, he seemed to accept life as it was handed to him. One of the memorable quotes in the book by Cudjo is that in Africa they knew there was a God; they just didn't know he had a son. The last paragraph: "I am sure that he does not fear death. In spite of his long Christian fellowship, he is too deeply a pagan to fear death. But he is full of trembling awe before the altar of the past."
This book sheds a different light on slavery. Too often we assume that all the slaves came from the same place: Africa. But Cudjo's story shows that there were different cultures, prejudices, are wars between tribes. The plight of the slave after emancipation is also interesting. They were so removed from the "big events" of the Civil War that they really did not understand what was happening to them.
This is definitely a book worth reading. Cudjo's dialect is sometimes difficult to read but I do believe the author was correct in using it.
What I didn't like was the beginning, an argument that encompasses the controversy surrounding this story. I felt it was circular, repetitive and the result lacked clarity. The end of the the book was a few more stories where once again it seems the truth is open to debate.
So I give Cudjos story and the telling of it 4 stars.
But taken as a whole, have settled on three.
This is a poignant, challenging, heartrending work I'm glad I read. I could have only wished it was a little longer - I have so many questions about this man's experience and want to read all sorts of books that were mentioned in the notes. The manuscript has been in Howard University archives and has only recently been published, in an edition that includes an introduction by Alice Walker and some (occasionally dry) academic notes by editor Deborah G. Plant.
There aren't many testimonies from those who survived the Middle Passage, for various reasons. Many Africans were never taught to read or write by their white slavemasters, and there was virtually no interest in recording their experiences. Kossola was quite old when Hurston traveled to speak with him and record his story; it's a wonder that we have this document at all, to be honest.
Hurston kept Kossala's dialect intact as best as she was able, which can make the first few pages of Kossola's account a bit difficult to read. Once I got the hang of the dialect, though, I found the book fascinating. The testimony itself is rather short, and I felt like the other essays included in the book were rather dull and didn't add much to the most important part of the book: Kossala's narrative.
Highly recommended.
Despite the undeniable interest and pathos of the subject matter, Barracoon did not find a publisher during Hurston's lifetime. If it had included more salient facts, perhaps it could have. The main text, which only runs about 112 pages with generous margins, consists of transcripts of the author's conversations with Lewis, in dialect, without the details that would flesh the story out. For example, Lewis's voyage on the slave ship is brushed over in just a few paragraphs. I wish Hurston would have asked more questions. This book is not a fully developed memoir or anthropological case study. Recommended for historical purposes only.
The story itself is quite short and not published at the time of writing. The story was recorded by Zora Neale Hurston in the early 1900s. The supporting information is quite extensive, but I'm not sure that it had to be half the volume of the book.
It's not actually as graphic about the period in slavery as you might imagine it would be, although it does go into quite a lot of detail of the capture of africans bu africans. It is an important eye witness account of something that has long since passed from human memory. I'm just not sure that this was the best presentation of that account.
Although completed by Hurston in 1931, but failed to find a publisher, Barracoon is book-length treatment of a topic she had first published a short piece on a few years earlier.
The introduction of the book gave quite a bit of background on a scandal regarding this work. After she published her original article, she was criticized for having plagiarized a book published in 1914 written by Emma Langdon Roche. She later revised her work and added more details of their friendship.
Nevertheless, I found this very interesting. I just wanted More – more of Cudjo’s experiences as a free African, and as a slave. However, I fully understand that Hurston could only write what was given to her by an elderly man.
I listened to the audiobook, which gave a fine representation of the rhythm and cadence of Cudjoe’s vernacular, which according to the Wikipedia article, was one of the reasons this book wasn’t published in Hurston’s lifetime.
The book was short and the account of Cudjo's life was so interesting. What struck me most was the attitude of African Americans to the Africans. It was a lot different than the homogeneous mass of blacks brought to mind when slaves and slavery are referred to in works like Jill Lepore's "These Truths". The Africans seem to have been treated as the lowest of the low by all facets of society which didn't turn out well for Cudjo's children.