In His Own Words
Zora Neale Hurston's Oral History of the Last Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17826706 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jacqueline Jones (0000-0002-1883-2150, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 122-126 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2333-9489 • E-ISSN: 2333-9497 |
| Publisher | University of California Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1525/dcqr.2019.8.4.122 |
| OpenAlex | W2997841807 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 1 |
Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” , by Zora Neale Hurston. Edited by Deborah G. Plant. New York: Amistad Press, 2018. 208 pages. $24.99 cloth. $16.99 paperback. $12.99 ebook. Barracoon is the firsthand account of Cudjo Lewis, a former slave brought to America in 1860. Cudjo is a survivor of the Clotilda : the last known ship to transport slaves across the Atlantic. He was illegally brought from the Bight of Benin on the West African coast to Mobile, AL, 50 years after the slave trade was outlawed in the United States. Barracoon is written by famed novelist, anthropologist, and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, whose major works include the autoethnographic folklore collection Mules and Men (1935) and novels Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934).1 Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, Barracoon contains oral history and folklore, presenting Lewis's story in first-person point of view and vernacular dialect. Hurston completed the manuscript for Barracoon in 1931, but had difficulty garnering interest from publishers. Viking Press offered to publish Barracoon on the condition that Hurston convert the text's dialect to standard English. Unwilling to make this concession, Barracoon remained unpublished during Hurston's lifetime, and until this publication, Barracoon was available only to scholars with access to Howard University's archival collections. Hurston began collecting folklore and oral histories in 1927 while a student at Barnard College. She studied anthropology under the direction of Franz Boas of Columbia University. During summer 1927, Hurston worked in Alabama and Florida as part of a fellowship sponsored by Carter G. Woodson's Journal of Negro History and the American Folklore Society. Her tasks included touring Fort Mose near St. Augustine, FL, a community that served as an early site of the Underground Railroad operating more than
Art · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Canadian Identity and History · History · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |