Review: Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

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Barracoon: The Story of the Last Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating and moving story of Cudjo Lewis, survivor of the last slaver ship to carry captive Africans to the United States. Lewis was interviewed by the great author and ethnologist Zora Neale Hurston and she lets him tell his own story in his own fashion. It's a moving tale of loss and hope and survival, and such eyewitness accounts of the horrors of slavery are all too rare when told in the victim's own voice. It's especially moving when the reader realizes that he was telling his tale less than 100 years ago, in the late 1920s. We are far closer to the tragedy of slavery and its legacy than people want to acknowledge.

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