Kossola describes the customs surrounding the death of someone like his grandfather. All his wives and the local people mourned together. In Chapter 3, Kossola tells about when his grandfather fell ill and died. Kossola shares how a man illegally kept a poisonous leopard whisker and faced a fatal punishment for doing so. That day, he continues talking about his grandfather’s life. In Chapter 2, Hurston arrives with peaches as a gift for Kossola. Hurston provides historical background for the slave trade, tracing the illegal journey of the ship the Clotilda to Africa, what happened there, and the details of its return to the US with African captives aboard.Ĭhapter 1 begins with Hurston’s framing narrative, describing one of her visits to Kossola’s house Kossola tells Hurston about his father and grandfather, who was a chief in his African hometown and had many wives and children.
She later interviewed Kossola for her own work in constructing his autobiography. In the Introduction, Hurston explains that she first met Kossola while doing research for her advisor at Barnard College, Dr. It’s a sometimes comical, sometimes tragic historical record about home and exile, pain, joy, family, and the whims of life and death. Barracoon follows the remarkable experiences of a man who enjoyed a joyful youth in Africa, endured the trials of the Middle Passage and slavery in the US, and rebuilt his life anew in Africa Town, Alabama, raising a family of his own and outliving them all. Consequently, the narrative sometimes meanders, but it consistently follows the linear trajectory of Kossola’s life, parallel to Hurston’s framing narrative, which describes her encounters with him. Hurston transcribed what Kossola told her during their time together, making her best effort to capture his oral and physical performance in the writing. The text was developed by anthropologist and creative writer Hurston, who spent many weeks interviewing Kossola. This study guide cites the Harper Collins Digital Edition published in December 2019.Ĭontent Warning: The source material and this guide describe slavery, extreme violence, murder, and police brutality.īarracoon is the firsthand account of the life of Oluale “Cudjo Lewis” Kossola, an African man who was among the captives on the Clotilda, the last slave ship to take the Middle Passage journey in 1859.
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