Zora Neale Hurston’s first manuscript, entitled “Barracoon”, has finally been published to the public after being written in the spring of 1931, almost 100 years after it was finished.

Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama in January of 1891. She was the daughter of two former slaves and moved to Florida when she was a young girl. She had a variety of odd jobs to support herself after her father remarried, including being a maid for an actress. She graduated from Howard University in 1920 and published some of her early works in the university’s newspaper. In the 1920s Hurston moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York during the peak of the Harlem Renaissance movement. She became an important figure in the art scene there and she congregated with the likes of people like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. One of her earliest acclaimed short stories was entitled “Sweat” and told a story about a women dealing with an unfaithful husband who leaves her. In 1937, Hurston wrote her most famous work, “Their Eyes Are Watching God”, a book that tells a story of a woman who learns self-reliance through multiple marriages and tragedy. Whitney Young’s own AP Literature & Composition class reads this novel and Haley Wellman 18’ says “it is a really great book.”

In 1927, when Hurston was studying anthropology with Franz Boas, she was assigned field research in the segregated South. It was a difficult task for a single, black woman who was often denied access to interviews and hotels. She found one man, Oluale Kossula, who was the last living person to be transported from Africa during the slave trade. Hurston returned to Alabama in 1931 to interview the man, whose slave name was Cudjo Lewis. The novel chronicles the man’s life and experiences. After Hurston finished the manuscript, many people refused to publish it. On April 28, 2018 “Barracoon” was finally published. Allison Mitola 18’ says that she is “excited to read the book. It should be an interesting story.

Image courtesy of zoranealehurston.com