Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

A photograph of The Door of No Return appears in the beginning of Barracoon. It’s located at La Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) on Gorée Island just off the coast of Senegal, West Africa. Gorée Island was a central location where European slave traders would come to purchase and take captive Africans to the Americas. Captured Africans were brought from inland on the continent to the island, where they were kept in a holding warehouse. They were fed poorly and lived in unsanitary conditions. People were stripped of their clothes, in preparation for the journey, and shackled. When the time came to depart, captives were shuttled through the Door of No Return, the small exit from the House of Slaves that led out to the ships. Millions of individuals passed through that archway, never to return to Africa again. Today The House of Slaves is a museum and memorial to the many lives lost by way of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Kossola recalls his own experience there in Chapter 6: “Barracoon.” A barracoon is an enclosure where enslaved people are held for a temporary period of time. Therefore, the title of the chapter (and the book) evokes The House of Slaves.