6/12/2023 0 Comments Barracoon by zora neale hurston![]() ![]() Like other Zora Neale Hurston books I’ve read, scholars are so eager to add their two cents that the “extras” get to be too extra. Kossola always, always wanted to be back in Africa, even as an old man. Hurston listens patiently and plies Kossola with fruits and meats as he tells how he grew up, was forced to the United States, lived as a slave for six years, and then had to recreate himself after the Emancipation Proclamation. But the nearby Dahomey tribe, known for starting war so they could capture prisoners and sell them to American slavers, took Kossola from his home when he was 19. ![]() Kossola came from a peaceful tribe that trained him as a soldier for defense purposes only. He was living in Alabama when Hurston first met him in 1927 - when he was around 85 years old! Hurston’s subject, born around 1841 as Oluale Kossola in West Africa, came to be known as Cudjo Lewis in the United States. Keep in mind that while slavery was still legal in the United States, the slave trade from Africa was not. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston is a nonfiction work written after Hurston interviewed the last living slave who had been brought over from Africa. ![]()
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