L'ultimo schiavo

Zora Neale Hurston, who was an anthropologist before she became a successful novelist, gathered in 1927 the testimony of the long life of the last surviving slave, Cudjo, who had arrived in the US in 1859. Cudjo recounted the story of his youth in Africa, his capture and sale to the whites, his difficult life in Alabama up to and after the emancipation of 1865. It was only in 2018 that the book which recounts his vicissitudes and feelings was published: it was ready in 1931, but the publishers asked for the Afroamerican dialect used by the author in the book to be cut, and Hurston refused in defence of the specific nature and distinctness of black culture. [Publisher's text].