Why She Refused To Whitewash Her Most Famous Work

zora neal huston smiling
Briona Lamback
December 16, 2024

When Zora Neale Hurston interviewed one of the last known survivors of the final slave ship to arrive in the US, there was no code-switching. Cudjo Lewis spoke in his dialect, and Zora wrote the book precisely as he told it to her. But publishers weren’t interested in authenticity.

Despite Hurston’s powerful narrative, they refused to publish it unless she rewrote it in “standard” English, but she said no.

For this reason, Barracoon didn’t see the light of day until 2018, 58 years after Hurston’s death. Although this delay might seem like a defeat for Hurston, it was really her victory, because the impact of Hurston’s refusal has been monumental.

Barracoon is now one of Huston’s most famous and revered works. It helped preserve a necessary part of our history that might’ve been whitewashed had Hurston not followed her intuition and stuck to her principles. Hurston’s refusal is a powerful reminder that we should never hide who we are to be successful. We should keep our culture close to us and refuse to appease anti-Blackness.

We may not always live to see the fruits of our labor in our lifetime, but staying committed to the truth, the culture, and liberation will always be worth it.

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