Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston *** (of 4)

Barracoon is a recently re-discovered manuscript. Zora Neale Hurston, one of America's greatest writers, gathered the oral history of Cudjo Lewis, America's last living slave, but the manuscript was not printed when it was first completed. Anyone that has considered the history of enslavement -- capture, chaining, bundling into cargo ships, sale, and forced labor -- is not likely to learn much that is new. Any step along the way is worse than imagination can conjure: being ripped from family and home, being locked in a fetid, lightless dungeon for months awaiting shipment, being chained below decks for weeks alongside unwashed, vomiting, defecating, crying Africans with whom you may not even share a common language, and being measured for sale to the highest bidder. And yet Barracoon has the strength to horrify anew because Cudjo is someone we know is real.

Cudjo remembers his African village, his lost mother, and his native language. Cudjo describes his forced labor. Sometimes Cudjo is so overtaken by the sadness of his memories he cannot speak to Hurston for days. As he says on more than one occasion, "Cudjo is so lonely."