Ernest J. Gaines

A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting and defying the expected. Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.

Miss Jane Pittman. She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.

Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, 'A GATHERING OF OLD MEN' is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man.Building to a climax that is as stunning as it is inevitable, 'A GATHERING OF OLD MEN' powerfully describes the racial tensions in 1970s Louisiana. Narrators Peter Francis James, Michelle-Denise Woods, Sally Darling, Graham Brown, Murphy Guyer, Tom Stechschulte, and Mark Hammer bring Gaines' masterful prose to vivid life.Running Time => 7hrs. and 37mins.©1992 Ernest J. Gaines (P)1996 Recorded Books

Ernest J. Gaines's new novella revolves around a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order.After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. When the editor of the local newspaper asks his cub reporter to dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, he heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who narrate with empathy, sadness, humor, and a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims--an honorable, just, and unsparing man who with his tough love had been handed the task of keeping the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana in line to protect them from the unjust world in which they lived. And when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning. In the telling, we learn the story of a small southern town, divided by race, and the black community struggling to survive even as many of its inhabitants head off northwards during the Great Migration.

This is the story of Marcus: bonded out of jail, where he has been awaiting trial for murder, he is sent to the Hebert plantation to work in the fields. There he encounters conflict with the overseer, Sidney Bonbon, and a tale of revenge, lust and power plays out between Marcus, Bonbon, Bonbon’s mistress Pauline, and Bonbon’s wife Louise.

A compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past...In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin—a respected minister and civil rights leader—comes face to face with the sins of his youth in the person of Robert X, a young, unkempt stranger who arrives in town for a mysterious "meeting" with the Reverend. In the confrontation between the two, the young man's secret burden explodes into the open, and Phillip Martin begins a long-neglected journey into his youth to discover how destructive his former life was, for himself and for those around him.“…on every page there's an authentic moment, or a dead-right knot of conversation, or a truer-than-true turn of phrase…”— Kirkus Reviews

In these five stories, Ernest Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying . As rendered by Gaines, this country becomes as familiar, and as haunted by cruelty, suffering, and courage, as Ralph Ellison's Harlem or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County.Gaines introduces us to this world through the eyes of guileless children and wizened jailbirds, black tenants and white planters. He shows his characters eking out a living and making love, breaking apart aand coming together. And on every page he captures the soul of black community whose circumstances make even the slightest assertion of self-respect an act of majestic—and sometimes suicidal—heroism. Bloodline is a miracle of storytelling.STORIES A Long Day in NovemberThe Sky Is GrayThree MenBloodlineJust Like a Tree

A compelling debut love story set in a deceptively bucolic Louisiana countryside, where blacks, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy coexistence--by the award-winning author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman .After living in San Francisco for ten years, Jackson returns home to his benefactor, Aunt Charlotte. Surrounded by family and old friends, he discovers that his bonds to them have been irreparably rent by his absence. In the midst of his alienation from those around him, he falls in love with Catherine Carmier, setting the stage for conflicts and confrontations which are complex, tortuous, and universal in their implications.

The beloved author of the classic, best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares the inspirations behind his books and his reasons for becoming a writer in this collection of stories and essays.Told in the simple and powerful prose that is a hallmark of his craft, these writings by Ernest J. Gaines faithfully evoke the sorrows and joys of rustic Southern life.From his depiction of his childhood move to California — a move that propelled him to find books that conjured the sights, smells, and locution of his native Louisiana home — to his description of the real-life murder case that gave him the idea for his masterpiece; this wonderful collection is a revelation of both man and writer.

A poor African American boy and his mother experience both discrimination and kindness during a trip to town to see the dentist.

One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying mother, who tells him that, come tomorrow morning, they are leaving to go to "Gran'mom's" house—without Sonny's father, Eddie. Later that morning, Sonny witnesses a fight between his parents, which revolves around his father having stayed out late the night before because his car had broken down. Eddie has apparently been neglecting his wife and son, devoting his free time instead to repairing his old car. In order to win back his wife, Eddie—with Sonny in tow—pays a visit to Madame Toussaint, an old lady knowledgeable in the ways of voodoo, who tells Eddie that the only way to save his marriage is by burning his car to the ground. This unforgettable story leads the reader through an eventful day on a Southern sugarcane plantation, and shows, through the eyes of a child, what life was like in the rural South of the 1940s. This new edition of A Long Day in November features Ernest J. Gaines's original introduction, as well as the black-and-white illustrations that accompanied the first edition of the book. Ernest J. Gaines 's 1993 novel A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, awarded the National Humanities Medal, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier. He lives in Oscar, Louisiana.

A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has returned to the plantation school to teach. As he struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, his aunt and Jefferson's godmother persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting and defying the expected. Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The fish are nearly jumping in the bayous of Louisiana, but hoodoo magic is just as easy to find. And one day, Bobby’s grandfather catches a haint. With his characteristically rich sense of place and deep understanding of the human psyche, Ernest Gaines, National Book Critics Circle Award winner and author of the classic novel A Lesson Before Dying, presents a raconteur’s tale of rustic Southern living, A selection from Gaines’s collection of prose, Mozart and Leadbelly. An eBook short.

The winner in 1994 of the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying , Gaines, whose career spans more than thirty-five years, continues to receive increasing critical and popular attention. In the community of southern authors, he finds his natural place. “Southern writers,” he says, “have much more in common than differences. They have in common a certain point of view as well.”Through television productions of his fiction― The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman , A Gathering of Old Men , and “The Sky is Gray”―Gaines has become widely known and appreciated. Although focused principally upon African American life in the Deep South, his writing bears strong influence of European authors.In these interviews, two of which have never before been printed, Ernest Gaines casts a retrospective light upon his long and productive career. Drawn from journals, magazines, and newspapers, the interviews are occasions for Gaines to recall his childhood, his “bohemian” days in San Francisco, his long effort to get his work published, and recent events in his life―including his marriage and his receiving a MacArthur Prize.

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Pubblicato nel 1971, L'autobiografia di Miss Jane Pittman narra attraverso lo sguardo di una donna la storia di riscatto della comunità afroamericana e le battaglie affrontate per il riconoscimento dei propri diritti. Jane ci racconta la sua vita e la sua coraggiosa lotta per la libertà, intrecciandola ad alcuni degli eventi di maggior rilievo nella storia americana. Si parte così dalle esperienze di una giovane schiava nel Sud degli Stati Uniti alla fine della guerra di secessione, passando per la guerra ispano-americana, i due conflitti mondiali, fino all'inizio della guerra del Vietnam. Attraverso l'incredibile 'odissea' di Miss Jane Pittman, Gaines tratta dei temi che non sono mai stati attuali quanto oggi.

Fulfill state-mandated objectives and national guidelines with Prestwick House Reproducible Activity Packs. Activities easily relate outside historical references, vital literary vocabulary, and detailed plot and themes analysis. Activities • Role playing• Creating dramatization• Five modes of writing• Completing maps and charts• Creating collages• Drawing editorial cartoons• Staging sets ans scenes• Responding to photographs and pictures• Conducting surveys• Creating scenarios• And more

Un jeune Noir se rend à la police après une bagarre. Il se retrouve en cellule avec deux autres détenus, cette nuit en captivité lui réserve quelques surprises ...

The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

From marriage, infidelity, and the mayhem of motherhood to scandal, tragedy, and illness—three women seek peace and comfort in Nantucket as they cope with life's challenges.

Very good condition

Mozart est un joueur de blues

As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying , Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers.Ernest J. Conversations brings together the author’s own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines’s works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work.Among the many things Gaines discusses in his interviews are the recurrent themes in his the search for manhood, the importance of personal responsibility and standing with dignity, the problems of fathers and sons, and the challenges of race and racism in America. He examines his fictional world and his strong sense of place, his role as teacher and mentor, the importance of strong women in his life, and the influence of spirituality, religion, and music on his work. He also talks about storytelling, the nature of narrative, writing as a journey, and how he sees himself as a storyteller.