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The protagonist of this fictional autobiography wrestles with race in America from the perspective of someone who learns that he is considered black but also that he can pass as white if he wants to. His personal ambitiousness and racial ambivalence makes him a sort of American Hamlet: undone by indecision. Will he be “a credit to his race” by advancing an African-American heritage he loves and appreciates in the face of a hostile culture, or will he retreat into the mediocrity of a safe, white, middle-class family life?
Along the way, he shares his penetrating observations about race relations in the American north and south, about the “freemasonry” of subterranean black American culture, about the emerging bohemian jazz subculture in New York City, and about traditions of African American religious music and oratory.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
African americans, fiction, Fiction, general, African American men, Fiction, African Americans, Blacks, Racially mixed people, Afro-American men, Classic Literature, Mulattoes, Dans la litte rature, Biographies, Noirs ame ricains, Fiction, historical, general, Passing (Identity), Race relations, Human skin color, Fiction, biographical, English fiction, Fiction, action & adventure, Racism and the arts, American literature, African American authors, Social conditions, Racism, History, Race identity, Ethnic relations, Biographies & autobiographies, General, Ps3519.o2625 a95 1995Places
United States, GeorgiaTimes
20th century, 19th centuryShowing 8 featured editions. View all 133 editions?
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Feb 22, 2016, Digireads.com
paperback
1420952366 9781420952360
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James Weldon Johnson: the autobiography of an ex-colored man
2010, Createspace
in English
1452826617 9781452826615
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
July 18, 2007, NuVision Publications
Paperback
in English
1595478671 9781595478672
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The autobiography of an ex-colored man
1995, Dover Publications, Inc.
in English
048628512X 9780486285122
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The autobiography of an ex-coloured man
1989, Vintage Books
in English
- 1st Vintage Books ed.
0679727531 9780679727538
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Book Details
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Work Description
"The Auto-biography of an Ex-colored Man," by James Weldon Johnson, is the tragic fictional story of an unnamed narrator who tells the story of his coming-of-age at the beginning of the 20th century. Light-skinned enough to pass for white but emotionally tied to his mother's heritage, he ends up a failure in his own eyes after he chooses to follow the easier path while witnessing a white mob set fire to a black man. First published in 1912, "The Auto-biography of an Ex-colored Man" explores the intricacies of racial identity through the eventful life of its mixed-race narrator. Throughout the book, James Weldon Johnson's protagonist is torn between the opportunities open to him as an apparently white person and his strong sense of black identity. Though he marries a white woman, he lives a life plagued with guilt regarding his abandonment of his heritage as an African-American. James Weldon Johnson's writing is so powerful and believable that many readers took the book for a true autobiography until Johnson acknowledged his authorship in 1914."--P. [4] of cover.
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September 11, 2023 | Edited by bitnapper | Merge works (MRID: 79360) |
September 10, 2023 | Edited by bitnapper | merge authors |
February 8, 2022 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from standard_ebooks:james-weldon-johnson record |