The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man - Paperback

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The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
  • The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man - Paperback

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man - Paperback

by James Weldon Johnson
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

by James Weldon Johnson (Author), Arna Bontemps (Introduction by)

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."

Back Jacket

This book is an emotionally gripping novel of a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. It's influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale. 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.

Author Biography

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a prolific writer and legendary civil rights activist who produced several novels, a pioneering work of cultural history, the first major anthology of black poetry, and numerous treatises on race relations. He served as U.S. consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua and as secretary of the NAACP.

Number of Pages: 212
Dimensions: 0.6 x 8.4 x 5.4 IN
Publication Date: March 01, 1991
ISBN9780809000326
Author James Weldon Johnson
PublisherHill & Wang
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedMarch 1991
LanguageENG- English
Pages212
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

African American & Black Classics Cultural Heritage Fiction Historical Fiction

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More by James Weldon Johnson

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - Paperback

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - Paperback

By James Weldon Johnson

About James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. Among the first to break through the barriers segregating his race, he was educated at Atlanta University and at Columbia and was the first black admitted to the Florida bar. He was also, for a time, a songwriter in New York, American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, executive secretary of the NAACP, and professor of creative literature at Fisk University--experiences recorded in his autobiography, Along This Way. Other books by him include Saint Peter Relates an Incident, Black Manhattan, and God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. In addition to his own writing, Johnson was the editor of pioneering anthologies of black American poetry and spirituals. He died in 1938. William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of To Tell a Free Story and editor or coeditor of more than thirty books on African American literature.

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