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Title: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson ISBN: 0-486-28512-X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 10 May, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.77 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Unknown classic
Comment: Perhaps best known for writing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing , James Weldon Johnson wrote one of the first novels to probe the ambiguities of race, the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. As a boy, the fictional title character is sent North with his Mother to be raised in Connecticut. He does extremely well in school and is even something of a musical prodigy.
But, he is stunned when one day in school a teacher asks the white students to stand, and scolds him when he joins them. He confronts his fair skinned mother and she reveals that she is indeed black and his father is a white Southern gentleman. His father later comes to visit, and even buys him a piano, but the child is unable to approach and deal with him.
As a young man, the death of his mother & sale of their house leaves him with a small stake & he determines to attend college. Though qualified, he rules out Harvard for financial reasons & heads back down South to attend Atlanta University. However, his stake is stolen from his boarding house room before he can register & he ends up with a job in a cigar factory.
When the factory closes, he heads North again, this time to New York City and discovers Ragtime music and shooting craps, excelling at the one & nearing ruin in the other. A white gentleman who has heard him play enters into an exclusive agreement to have him play at parties & subsequently takes him along on a tour of Europe.
Inevitably, he is drawn back to America and to music. He tours the South collecting musical knowledge so that he will be able to compose a uniquely American and Black music. But his idyll is shattered when he sees a white lynch mob burn a black man. In the wake of this experience, he decides to "pass" for white--not due to fear or discouragement, but due to "Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals."
Abandoning his musical ambitions, he takes a job as a clerk, does well investing in real estate & meets a white woman who he wishes to marry. After examining his conscience he decides to tell her that he is black. After taking some time to confront this fact, she consents to marriage.
As the novel closes, the "ex-colored man" tells us: "My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."
And the reader can't help but feel profoundly ashamed of a system of racial oppression that forced a man to make these choices--a wonderful novel.
GRADE: B+
Rating: 5
Summary: Spellbinding and relevant
Comment: For a book which was first published in 1912, this is an amazingly relevant work for today. Johnson's novel (hidden in the form of an autobiography) graphically looks at relations between the races in American. The nameless main character is born in the South to an African-American mother and a white Southern aristocrat. He and his mother move to Connecticut when he is very young, allowing Johnson to show us the benevolent face of pervasive racism of the United States. Johnson avoids the easy "good" vs. "evil" view of the oppressed vs. the oppressors. Instead, the narrator becomes a permanent outcast, returning to the South upon the death of his mother and then to the ragtime era New York City. The style of the novel is clear and extremely readable--and very current. The end of the novel dives deep into the issue of racism, causing both black and white readers to question their long-held assumptions about who they are and who they appear to be to others.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderfully woven plot that holds your interest
Comment: I absolutely loved reading this book, and would eagerly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn of Johnson's America through the eyes of a man caught between two worlds. The sometimes humorous passages and vivid details held my interest and fueled my imagination. I have countless sections of the book underlined in red.
Though written years ago, it is highly relevant to life in America today, and the self-effacing nature ('invisibility') of the narrator makes it even more intriguing as you follow what goes on in the class and race-defined society through his eyes.
A short but captivating (one of my favorite autobios) 'must-read'.
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Title: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois ISBN: 0486280411 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 20 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington ISBN: 0486287386 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 04 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth ISBN: 048629899X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 29 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $1.50 |
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Title: Darkwater : Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. DuBois ISBN: 0486408906 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 04 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs ISBN: 0486419312 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 09 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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