A review by colin_cox
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston
5.0
This past semester, like most semesters, I taught Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery. It’s a seminal entry in the slave narrative genre, and for many of my students, it's an emotional tale that reaffirms certain foundational assumptions about what America, when at its best, can be. This is an oversimplified reading of Washington, but one that’s all too familiar from first-year students. Even after studying smart critiques of Washington, many students cling to a reading of him as a figure who articulates significant and optimistic ideas about what America represents, instead of seeing him as a smart, well-intentioned yet complicated and potentially shortsighted figure.
Given a chance, I would ask future students to read Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon as a response to Washington. In this short but affecting text researched and written in 1927, Hurston articulates Langston Hughes’ “dreamed deferred” in harrowing detail. Barracoon tells the story of Cudjo Lewis or Kossola, a captive of the last slave ship to make the transatlantic journey from Africa. Repeatedly, Kossola voices his desire to return to Africa instead of remaining displaced in a country that has little room (both figurative and literal) for him. Unlike Up From Slavery, Kossola’s story is not one of triumph and success; it doesn't speak to the enduring spirit of a people and a place. Instead, Hurston leaves her reader with this singular, isolated figure who “In spite of his long Christian fellowship...is too deeply a pagan to fear death” yet remains “full of trembling awe before the altar of the past” (94). As Hurston suggests, it's a past brimming with the worst sorts of violence and objectification. Of course, it's a violent past that didn't begin in America, even if America is where the worst of it reached its zenith.
Given a chance, I would ask future students to read Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon as a response to Washington. In this short but affecting text researched and written in 1927, Hurston articulates Langston Hughes’ “dreamed deferred” in harrowing detail. Barracoon tells the story of Cudjo Lewis or Kossola, a captive of the last slave ship to make the transatlantic journey from Africa. Repeatedly, Kossola voices his desire to return to Africa instead of remaining displaced in a country that has little room (both figurative and literal) for him. Unlike Up From Slavery, Kossola’s story is not one of triumph and success; it doesn't speak to the enduring spirit of a people and a place. Instead, Hurston leaves her reader with this singular, isolated figure who “In spite of his long Christian fellowship...is too deeply a pagan to fear death” yet remains “full of trembling awe before the altar of the past” (94). As Hurston suggests, it's a past brimming with the worst sorts of violence and objectification. Of course, it's a violent past that didn't begin in America, even if America is where the worst of it reached its zenith.