"Barracoon: An Intimate Look at the Life of the Last 'Black Cargo'”

Kindle Customer: Interesting and moving. Everyone should read it. Everyone should know this story. And, if you can, go see the Clotilda in Mobile, Alabama. They pulled it out of the river recently and have a whole museum run by the descendants of the people in this book.

United States on Feb 11, 2024

Simona Carter: Beautiful

United States on Feb 03, 2024

Ldsterling: My mom likes documentaries. We saw the documentary for this story together. It was a great story. Then I bought her the book. I haven’t read it yet.

United States on Jan 04, 2024

Cliente Kindle: Cudjo is the best character I ve read ever! The writer could bring us a black free soul!! He was not a slave no mo!!!

Brazil on Nov 04, 2023

Henry True: Hurston interviews Cudjo Lewis in 1927. He was a member of the last slave cargo brought into the U.S. - illegally - on the Clotilda in 1859 when he was about 19. He was a slave for less than six years when he was set free by the Civil War and thereafter spent the rest of his life outside Mobile AL. It is a woeful tale of his capture and sale to whites by a more powerful tribe than his own, his post slavery marriage and eventual death of his wife and all his children and, perhaps most of all, he ceaseless desire to be back on "Afficky soil." Found that latter puzzling since his recounting of his capture and slaughter of his village by fellow Africans made his beloved "Afficky" sound like pretty awful place.
The actual "Baracoon" story takes up about a third of the book. The other two-thirds is filled with introductions, prefaces, pages of book review snippets, additional stories told by Lewis, afterword, notes, glossary - never saw anything like it. But it is mostly interesting and educational, especially for its authenticity and historical value. "12 Years A Slave" is a better true history of one slave's life, and the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," perhaps the greatest book about...

United States on Oct 06, 2023

Dominic Stafford Uglow: There are precious few first hand accounts of what enslavement was like, nor of life in Africa before enslavement, or of Africa Town. This book provides accounts of all three and is rare and precious as a result. The work of a pioneering black female historian, it is a vital read. You'll be the better for it. Trust me.

United Kingdom on May 17, 2023

Kunde: Spannend

Germany on Sep 02, 2020

marco carrara: Short, well written and full of humanity.
It surely is not a great book of fiction as Roots but a mandatory complement to it. It clarifies how the African kingdoms were, as suppliers, as guilty of the slave trade as the slavers, European and Arabs, as buyers.

Italy on Aug 28, 2019

Geoff: I picked up this book after reading a small blurb about it. Hearing the story of the last living person who had been brought over from Africa as a slave, in their own words, was a definite draw.

I like how the author Zora Neale Hurston used the style of speech Kossula used. I feel that gives a more accurate view to the story being told. The story itself was fascinating, something I could not imagine. How his people and surrounding peoples lived and then on to his story of becoming a slave and then to freedom and how life was after that.

After the story is told there are other stories as told to the author which are interesting. After that a discussion about the author herself. Finally a glossary of terms. All of this is interesting and for me useful information regarding this story.

I give it 5 stars even though I wish there was more. I liked what I read and would recommend it as an essential read.

Canada on Jul 08, 2018

Kathleen D. Koziol: Hurston, Zora Neale.
Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo
If you read the book, you don't need to read my review. But I want you to see this quote most of all: "When I think ’bout dat time I try not to cry no mo’. My eyes dey stop cryin’ but de tears runnee down inside me all de time. "
I just read this book, and midway through, I am crying heavily, tears rolling down my face. But not for the horrors and just plain misfortune, which was unimagineable, that he endured during his 91 years, but for the beauty and love that shined through in spite of it.
He was only a "slave" for 5 and a half years. His freedom granted at the end of the Civil War. So the life of a slave was not the main focus of this book, but rather his endless yearning for home, and his quest to recreate it in America.
After reading this, and in the light of the enormous GREED that is coming to light in our own govenment, I can see the thread of GREED running through this whole story and through the entire story of the slave trade in America.
Yes, other Africans sold their captors into slavery. But they would have had no where to sell them if white men in ships had not been waiting on...

United States on May 10, 2018