Trade paperback edition in good condition. Some wear to cover. Fine reading copy.
“The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have the justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they’re safe.”
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.
*Banned due to mature themes of sexual content, violence, profanity, and its unflinching look at racism and injustice in the Jim Crow South.
Read Alikes for A Lesson Before Dying: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Street by Ann Petry; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones; Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Trade paperback edition in good condition. Some wear to cover. Fine reading copy.
“The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have the justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they’re safe.”
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.
*Banned due to mature themes of sexual content, violence, profanity, and its unflinching look at racism and injustice in the Jim Crow South.
Read Alikes for A Lesson Before Dying: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Street by Ann Petry; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry; Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones; Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
ISBN 0-375-70270-9
Ernest J. Gaines
1993
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
