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Kossula / Cudjo Lewis
The book’s author and one of its narrators, an intrepid anthropologist who interviews Cudjo and reports his life story. Hurston is herself a budding intellectual trying to make a name for herself, and will soon become an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. In this regard, she seems cognizant of the potential career benefits of bringing Cudjo’s story to light and sometimes behaves calculatingly towards him, bringing gifts of food in order to ingratiate herself and at one point instructing him to write a letter of thanks to the wealthy woman who is funding her anthropological research. At the same time, Hurston is sympathetic to Cudjo and deeply moved by his story, sometimes moved to tears herself and often withdrawing when she senses he’s exhausted from retelling previous stories. In her faithfulness to Cudjo’s dialect she evinces a deep belief that his story is inherently valuable and deserving of a place in American literature and history. By the end of the interview process, she has come to see Cudjo as more of a friend than an interview subject.
Zora Neale Hurston Quotes in Barracoon
The Barracoon quotes below are all either spoken by Zora Neale Hurston or refer to Zora Neale Hurston . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introduction
Quotes
All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.
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Chapter 11
Quotes
When he came out I saw that he had put on his best suit but removed his shoes. “I want to look lak I in Affica, ‘cause dat where I want to be,” he explained.
He also asked to be photographed in the cemetery among the graves of his family.
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Chapter 12
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I had spent two months with Kossula, who is called Cudjo, trying to find the answers to my questions. Some days we ate great quantities of clingstone peaches and talked […] At other times neither was possible, he just chased me away. He wanted to work in his garden or fix his fences. He couldn’t be bothered.
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When I crossed the bridge, I know he went back to his porch; to his house full of thoughts. To his memories of fat girls with ringing golden bracelets, his drums that speak the minds of men, to palm-nut cakes and bull-roarers, to his parables.
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Zora Neale Hurston Quotes in Barracoon
The Barracoon quotes below are all either spoken by Zora Neale Hurston or refer to Zora Neale Hurston . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introduction
Quotes
All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.
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Chapter 11
Quotes
When he came out I saw that he had put on his best suit but removed his shoes. “I want to look lak I in Affica, ‘cause dat where I want to be,” he explained.
He also asked to be photographed in the cemetery among the graves of his family.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12
Quotes
I had spent two months with Kossula, who is called Cudjo, trying to find the answers to my questions. Some days we ate great quantities of clingstone peaches and talked […] At other times neither was possible, he just chased me away. He wanted to work in his garden or fix his fences. He couldn’t be bothered.
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When I crossed the bridge, I know he went back to his porch; to his house full of thoughts. To his memories of fat girls with ringing golden bracelets, his drums that speak the minds of men, to palm-nut cakes and bull-roarers, to his parables.
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