Not One Word From the Sold: Critical Approaches to Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon
SAMLA's 91st Annual Convention will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, November 8-10. The conference theme is "Languages: Power, Identity, Relationships." I am soliciting papers for a panel on Zora Neale Hurston's most recent publication, Barracoon.
Originally named Kossola, Cudjo Lewis was illegally brought to America on the last slave ship, the Clotilda. Hurston completed the manuscript about his life story in 1931, but it was not published until 2018 as Barracoon, The Story of the Last Black Cargo. Critics praised this text as evidence of Hurston’s anthropological skills, yet it also serves as a rejoinder to the skewed white-washed history of slavery in the popular imagination.