Heyyyyy! Looks like 2018 is already guaranteed to be better than 2017: HarperCollins is publishing a long-lost anthropological text written by Their Eyes Were Watching God novelist Zora Neale Hurston in May. Kristian Wilson at Bustle says:

Barracoon is the story of Cudjo Lewis, the last person known to have survived the transatlantic slave trade. The book evolved out of Hurston's interviews with "the Black community of Plateau, Alabama, which was founded by Cudjo Lewis and other ex-slaves from the ship that brought them to America." Based on the author's conversations with the nonagenarian Lewis in the 1920s and '30s, the book covers his life, from his childhood in Africa through the last days of the Civil War. The title refers to the barracks used to hold prisoners in anticipation of the Middle Passage. Hurston completed Barracoon before her death in 1960.

What a fascinating historical document. And what a great time to publish this book!