"Their Eyes Were Watching God," published in 1937, is Hurston's best-known work. You can read a review and purchase "Barracoon" at. It was there, in 1927, when Hurston met Lewis and recorded his account. Later, Lewis and other former slaves established a free community called Africatown, near Mobile. In 1859 when Lewis was captured, the international slave trade already had been outlawed by Congress 50 years earlier, but Lewis still worked as a slave for years before regaining his freedom. The work tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, an Alabama man who was thought to be the last living person captured in Africa and brought to America on the last-known U.S. Publishers asked Hurston to rewrite the manuscript "in language rather than dialect," but she refused and it went unpublished. "Barracoons" were the barracks that enslaved Africans were kept in before they were forced onto slave ships. "Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo" will be available Tuesday in a new edition published by Amistad, a division of HarperCollins. Watch Video: Game Changers: Their Eyes Were Watching GodĪlmost 90 years after being rejected, an unpublished manuscript by Zora Neale Hurston, who spent her final years in Fort Pierce, will be made available to the public for the first time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |