Barracoon : The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

One of the New York Times' Most Memorable Literary Moments of the Last 25 Years!  • New York Times Bestseller •  TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018  • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • 

“A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times

“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison

“Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker

A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.

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.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Moses, Man of the Mountains; and Seraph on the Suwanee) and was still working on her fifth novel, The Life of Herod the Great, when she died; three books of folklore (Mules and Men and the posthumously published Go Gator and Muddy the Water and Every Tongue Got to Confess); a work of anthropological research (Tell My Horse); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road); an international bestselling ethnographic work (Barracoon); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, grew up in Eatonville, Florida, and lived her last years in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet, and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, five children’s books, and several volumes of essays and poetry. She has received the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award, and has been honored with the O. Henry Award, the Lillian Smith Award, and the Mahmoud Darwish Literary Prize for Fiction. She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and received the Lennon Ono Peace Award. Her work has been published in forty languages worldwide.

Deborah G. Plant is an African American Literature and Africana Studies Independent Scholar and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of The Life of Herod the Great (2025) by Zora Neale Hurston and author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All (2024); editor of Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018), a New York Times bestseller, by Zora Neale Hurston; and author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times (2017), a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston (2010); and author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit (2007) and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston (1995). She holds a BA from Southern University, an MA from Atlanta University, and MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was instrumental in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies and chaired the department for five years. Plant resides in Florida.