Barracoon

In the summer of 1927, before Zora Neale Hurston wrote "Their Eyes Were Watching God," she traveled from New York City to Mobile, Alabama, to spend time with Cudjo Lewis, one of the passengers on the last slave ship to cross the Atlantic. Hurston's account of Cudjo's experience has now been made available to the public for the first time. The biography spent the last sixty years in Howard University's Library, never before published because Hurston refused to change the account from the dialect in which it was told to her. I am so thankful she had the foresight to stand firm on that point, because what I love the most about this literary treasure is Cudjo's voice. The way he speaks brings you directly to the specific time and place in which the interviews were originally conducted, and makes a world of difference.