The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man | James Weldon Johnson

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man | James Weldon Johnson | What is wrong with some of these reviewers?

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The Autobiography ...

	The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man James Weldon Johnson Vintage, 1989 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

First published anonymously in 1912, this resolutely unsentimental novel gave many white readers their first glimpse of the double standard -- and double consciousness -- that ruled the lives of black people in modern America. Republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man became a groundbreaking document of Afro-American culture; the first first-person novel ever written by a black, it became an eloquent model for later novelists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.

Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a journey through the strata of black society at the turn of the century -- from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel aristocrats to the musicians who hammered out the rhythms of ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is a complex and moving examination of the question of race and an unsparing look at what it meant to forge an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but color.

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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 with his own personal identity, both as a person as well as a 'person of color'. The writing is not perfect, but it is a well crafted story with fairly interesting characters, and if you are of mixed ancestry, parts of the book will speak to you in profound and comforting ways. Ways that make you realize that those of us who are mixed are not, and have not been, alone. Sorry to say, but the average review for this book tells me how little the average white person in this country really understands about racial issues. The fact that the word "mulatto" is used in the official description of this book, as well as in a consumer review furthers that. 'Mulatto' is as outdated a term as 'negro', and should not be used in 2007 America.

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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.

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.

I cannot say more to those who never understood a Black man than to read...this...book!! You will be enlightened further than you can now imagine.

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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.

reviews: page 1, 2

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