“BARRACOON” BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON AS THE GENRE OF TESTIMONY

Abstract

Barracoon : The Story of the Last "Black Cargo " is a non-fiction work based on the interviews made by the African American writer, Harlem Renaissance star Zora Neale Hurston with the last living survivor of the slave trade Cudjo Lewis. The text demonstrates the interaction dynamics of memoirs, historiography, autobiography, and oral story which is generally referred to the genre of testimony. This genre is usually considered to be the invention of the second part of the 20 century literature, and it identifies - as some critics declare - “the most profound change in literature since the breakthrough of modernism. As a matter of fact, it was Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon that actually represents this change that Black aesthetics brought to the modern literature - we can see there all the significant testimony genre issues: the story-teller as victim, trauma experience, collective memory as a basis of self-identity.