On Tuesday, Amistad Press, a division of HarperCollins, will release Zora Neale Hurston’s long-unpublished first book, “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo,’” edited by Deborah G. Plant. In late April, Vulture published excerpts from the book, which the magazine said had “languished in a vault” since 1931. I’m thrilled by the publication of Hurston’s short book on such an important subject — but I wish that we could stop talking about unpublished manuscripts in such terms. In many cases, it’s not, as such language suggests, scholarly neglect that hides these works from the public eye. Instead, the trouble begins with onerous and excessive copyright protections, protections that are meant to profit the Walt Disney Co. more than they are intended to enrich our understanding of American literature.

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