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by: James Weldon Johnson
List Price: $11.00Amazon.com's Price: $9.90 You Save: $1.10 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 301.45
EAN: 9780809000326
ISBN: 0809000326
Label: Hill and Wang
Manufacturer: Hill and Wang
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 214
Publication Date: March 01, 1991
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Sales Rank: 622829
Studio: Hill and Wang
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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-Coloured 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 the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans.
Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to 'pass' for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century--from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. This is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America, a hymn to the anguish of forging an identity in a nation obsessed with color. And, as Arna Bontemps pointed out decades ago, 'the problems of the artist [as presented here] seem as contemporary as if the book had been written this year.'
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Classic
For anybody that is interested in this book, keep in mind that it was written in the 1920's. People talked, wrote, and thought very differently, and it was groundbreaking subject matter that paved the way for many other great works. This is the legacy of this book, despite it's flaws. It can be melodramatic at times, and at it's core it is a love story about a man finding racial acceptance from a source he never dreamed of. Most of the book is about a man stuck in the middle of two worlds, struggling ... Read More
Rating: - Place on your list of books to read in this lifetime.
I found this book on the bottom shelf in my college bookcase. From the first chapter, I found myself on an old, winding, rollercoaster. James Weldon lived a life in early to mid-twentieth century more filled with extraordinary adventures than many men today. The matter that he did so 'passing' as Caucasian isn't just a coincidence. Character is what matters. . .as a reader should derive from his story; however, the matter of race devoured Weldon's every chance at completing each sweet piece of life-pie. ... Read More
Rating: - What is wrong with some of these reviewers?
This book is excellent. I read it for a class in college years and years ago... and I still think about it.
Rating:  - NO
sorry, i just thought the book was boring and worst of all, its a good story with alot of food for thought, but it was just written so poorly that it was ruined.
Rating:  - Grand finale...not
I think the ending of this book ruined it for me. I enjoyed the middle a lot and didn't want to put it down, but I feel the ending just contradicted everything in the worst way.
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