Borders and Betrayal in Zora Neale Hurston's Barracoon: Rethinking Truths and Facts in the American Slave Narrative.

This article analyzes Zora Neale Hurston’s posthumously published *Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"* (2018), which redefines the American slave-narrative genre by emphasizing the unresolved tensions between pre-captivity African identity and post-captivity American experience. Based on interviews with Cudjo Lewis (Oluale Kossula), believed to be the last surviving African slave brought to the U.S. aboard the Clotilda, *Barracoon* foregrounds the trauma of African betrayal—specifically by King Ghezo’s Dahomey forces who captured Lewis—complicating traditional slave narratives that focus primarily on the brutality of enslavement in America. Hurston’s work departs from conventional slave narratives by preserving Lewis’s vernacular and prioritizing “essential truth” over factual clarity, thereby highlighting the psychological and cultural dislocation experienced by formerly enslaved Africans. The text also critiques sanitized portrayals of African actors in the transatlantic slave trade and exposes the ongoing systemic injustices faced by Lewis and his community in post-Emancipation America.