RaveThe AtlanticIn Barracoon, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the American public’s narrow view of the African continent, the transatlantic slave trade, and the diasporic cultures that came as a result of it ... Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon widens the scope of this default, reductive rendering of history through form and function ... Kossola’s story broadens the popular narrative, showing that the lust for dominance that sparked the slave trade wasn’t endemic to colonizers, and that West African societies were often active participants ... Barracoon shines largely due to Hurston’s theory that when it comes to African subjects in America, objectivity has been permanently compromised ... Hurston gives him space to be subject, narrator, and protagonist alike. The complete work produces a harrowing image of a man ... In Barracoon, Hurston illuminates his resilience without romanticizing it as necessary in the search for self-realization.
