Barracoon

National Book Award--winning author Kendi adapts legendary author Hurston's posthumous Barracoon for young readers. The original manuscript, unpublished until 2018, relates Hurston's lengthy interviews with Cudjo Lewis, the last known surviving person transported from Africa to the U.S. via the Middle Passage. Lewis tells his moving story in his own voice, which employs African American Vernacular English (often called Ebonics), though Kendi has changed some spellings to make the language more accessible to young readers. A lengthy introduction provides necessary context to Cudjo's story, which begins in Africa in 1859 when he, then 19, was taken captive and transported to Dahomey, where he was briefly incarcerated in the barracoons, the jails where traders kept enslaved people, before he was sold and transported to America on a miserable voyage that lasted 70 days. The story recounts his subsequent six years of slavery before he became free in 1865 and participated in the building of Africatown, which is now a historic Black community in Alabama. Cudjo's story is infrequently a happy one--his six children predeceased him and his wife then left him--and is sometimes recounted through tears. It is, nevertheless, an important historic document that provides an intimate look at slavery in America. The book, illustrated in vivid black-and-white drawings, belongs in every library.

Gr 3--7--"The most valuable things humans receive from the past generations are not money. They are stories." Collected by Zora Neale Hurston in 1931, the tale of the "Last Black Cargo" wasn't published for 87 years because Hurston refused to alter the dialect of the formerly enslaved Cudjo Lewis. The sole living Black man kidnapped from West Africa in 1859, Cudjo survived transport to the U.S. on the final slave ship, was forced to work, and was suddenly liberated in 1865 with no resources or means to return home. A significant introduction creates the context for Cudjo's story and Hurston's fieldwork as an anthropologist to gather it. Kendi honors the tale by preserving both Cudjo's and Hurston's voices. The visual art as well as the narrative are exceptional; astonishing black-and-white images created by fine artist Lee-Johnson demand attention and create pause. Cudjo's lifelong yearning for his home and the tragic lives of his six children bring readers to his final parting with Hurston. The interviews and artistry here create of this narrative an emotional experience. VERDICT This adaptation of Hurston's beautiful, important work is a true gift. Highly recommended for all libraries.--Janet S. Thompson

In 1860, more than fifty years after the United States outlawed the slave trade, the ship Clotilda journeyed back to Alabama from West Africa, carrying kidnapped people. Years later, Hurston, renowned anthropologist, writer, and folklorist, interviewed eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis (born Oluale Kossula), who was purportedly the last survivor of the ship, at his home in Plateau, Alabama. Kendi (adapter of Hurston's Magnolia Flower, rev. 11/22, and The Making of Butterflies, rev. 5/23) has adapted the seminal work, first published in 2018, for young readers. He opens by providing thoroughly drawn context, characterizing the transatlantic human trade as the "most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence" and describing the horrific conditions under which enslaved people existed. In African American Vernacular English, or Ebonics ("I want tell-ee somebody who I is...I want you everywhere you go to tell everybody what Cudjo say"), the man shared memories of his family and community in his home village, the harrowing Middle Passage, his five-and-a-half years of enslavement, and his freedom following the Civil War during which he married, had children, and cofounded AfricaTown (later renamed Plateau). Throughout the story, his loneliness and longing to return to his native home are palpable, supplying readers with an intimate perspective on his strength to survive. Kendi illuminates these memories in a captivating narrative that exudes empathy and authenticity. Pencil and black ink drawings (unseen) accompany the text. Powerful, profound, and necessary. Pauletta Brown BracyJanuary/February 2024 p.114 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Scholar Kendi adapts Hurston's account of one of the last survivors of the transatlantic slave trade. Among her many accomplishments, Hurston was a trained anthropologist, and one of her works of scholarship--based on interviews conducted in the late 1920s but not published until 2018--was the story of Cudjo Lewis, the last person to endure the Middle Passage. Although the slave trade was outlawed in 1808 in the United States, in 1859, the captain of the Clotilda secretly traveled to West Africa to purchase enslaved people. Lewis recounts his harrowing tale, including being imprisoned in an enclosure called "the barracoon" before he was sold and brought to Alabama. Lewis endured enslavement for five and a half years, until the Civil War ended. Those who came over on the Clotilda formed a community, and once it became clear they could not return to West Africa, they worked together to buy land for a village they named AfricaTown, where they built homes and a church and raised families. Kendi's adaptation provides context and clarity. The use of dialect is understandable and authentic; Kendi allows Hurston's storytelling mastery to shine through for younger readers. The relationship between Hurston and Lewis enriches the story, but it's clear that his firsthand account is the primary focus. Final art not seen. A powerful enslavement narrative from a literary icon, deftly retold for a younger audience. (Nonfiction. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.