Showing results for "American Autobiography" in African American

First published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man became one of James Weldon Johnson’s most famous works, and remains a testament to the lives and experiences of both Johnson and his peers. Although primarily a work of fiction, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man offers many parallels with the life of Johnson himself. Set shortly after the Civil War, this powerful fictional memoir recounts the life of a biracial man, grappling with questions around identity, race and justice.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a million copies nationwide since its publication in 1971, making the fictional character of Miss Jane so real many people don’t know she exists only in the imagination of Louisiana-born author Ernest J. Gaines. Miss Jane is 100 years old when she is interviewed by an area high school teacher looking to teach his students more about plantation society in the Deep South. Her story is not only a vivid picture of the South before the dawn of the civil rights era, but also a story of one woman’s survival against overwhelming odds.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, a 1912 novel by James Weldon Johnson, is a fictional autobiography which was originally published anonymously. It chronicles the intricacies of racial identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the life of its biracial narrator. The book portrays his journey through America's color lines, from his attendance of a black college in Florida to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the suburbs of the Northeast, and a visit to Europe. The author employs places, character, and incidents from his own life....

James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright.

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and...

A look back at the cultural and political force of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, in celebration of her hundredth birthday Artist–Rebel–Pioneer Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the great American literary icons of the twentieth century, a protégé of...

In this fictional confession, an unnamed narrator reveals the “great secret” of his life: he was born mixed race - and his ability to pass as white has provided him a unique perspective on America’s profound racial prejudice. As he recounts his experiences in the American South, the suburbs of the Northeast, New York City jazz clubs, and various European capitals, he also grapples with the emotional fallout of a life lived in constant fear of discovery - a life lived, in other words, in a culture unaccountably preoccupied with the shade of a person’s skin.