Besides in her novels, Zora Neale Hurston left us a rich legacy of black cultural history through her recordings as an anthropologist of the African American folk narrative, striving to, as she puts it “set down essential truth.” Here in this vital addition to her already known work, dating back to 1927, are interviews documenting Cudjo Lewis’s own story, the last known living African American shipped over on a black slave ship. Because she preserves his original vernacular in writing, it provides us with the rare opportunity to take in Cudjo’s experiences as a firsthand observer, giving an account of history so important to America and Africa’s past.
–Aubrey Winkler, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
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