Barracoon

Sometimes for fun I’ll search for those videos on YouTube of those old-time TV shows where they have a really old person talk about their experiences, and since they’re already old at the time of filming, you get to see some really interesting people talk about some piece of history, like civil war veterans talking about a certain battle or an actual eyewitness to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. So when I searched for black-owned bookstores near me and saw this book, I was immediately interested, and yeah, this book is pretty much exactly like that.

Zora Neale Hurston basically condensed an interview transcript with the last living former slave in the US into a sort-of monologue. The book itself is very quick, only about 150 pages, with a lot of extras added on. But those 150 pages are 90% Kossola speaking. The rest is Hurston setting the scene. Honestly, there isn’t much to review here. It’s such a unique type of book that I think you should just read it, straight up. I can guarantee you it will be one of the most fascinating books you’ll ever read.

The extras in the book are also worth talking about: there are some interesting essays about Hurston, like why this book wasn’t published for 70+ years, and some other interesting additions, but they were more like nice add-ons than important parts of the book.

It’s really something you have to see for yourself, like watching Nate Robinson dunk, or Manute Bol hit 6 threes. Not in the “unexpected performance” way, but in the “writing about it doesn’t do it justice” way.