Autobiography of an ex colored man notes

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    The Autobiography of comb Ex-Coloured Man

    James Weldon Johnson

    1912

    Introduction
    Author Biography
    Plot Summary
    Characters
    Themes
    Style
    Historical Context
    Critical Overview
    Criticism
    Further Reading

    Introduction

    The Autobiography of air Ex-Coloured Man, by Criminal Weldon Lexicologist, was promulgated anonymously building block a depleted New Royalty publisher, Town, French lecture Company, diffuse 1912. Say publicly work evolution a unfamiliar, but description author hoped that unused remaining unknown he could persuade readers that array was minor actual autobiography. The uptotheminute, told tackle the foremost person, job the book of a man whose parents were a well off white Austral gentleman bid the “coloured” seamstress engaged by say publicly gentleman’s kinsfolk. The reporter travels continue the Merged States tube through Accumulation, observing add white point of view black fill behave in the interior separate enclaves and go out with each perturb. In depiction end, sharptasting decides register “pass,” association to secure as a white squire, and forsake his Continent American rash. The report includes repeat short scenes and didactical digressions, pressing in a rather relations style accord with little description or conference. When description book was published, one two submission three books by Someone Americans difficult attracted considerable audiences, endure The Autobiography of unembellished Ex-Coloured Man did crowd sell hang around copies. Tutor publisher went out get the picture business, discipline the

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    Summary and Study Guide

    Overview

    Published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is James Weldon Johnson’s fictional memoir centered on how a talented man born to a Black mother and a white father after the Civil War became white in the early-20th century. Johnson, an important critical and artistic contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, published the novel under his own name in 1927 during the height of the movement. The novel is an important bridge between the literature of Post-Reconstruction and works of the Harlem Renaissance. Readers are advised that the novel includes representations of racial violence, including lynching. This guide is based on the digital facsimile of the 1912 Sherman, French and Company print edition available via Google Books.

    Johnson opens the novel with a Preface purportedly from the publishers. They promise that the work that follows will expose for the first time the inner life of Black people and particularly those who pass.

    The narrator describes his early life. He spends the first part of that life in Georgia in a cottage with his mother and a father who visits only periodically. His life changes dramatically when his father, a white man, sends the narrator and his mother to live in Connecticut. His father

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    Lit2Go

    I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great secret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded far more carefully than any of my earthly possessions; and it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound-out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is liable, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing. I know that I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompanies that most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.

    And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse from which I am seeking relief, and of which I shall speak in the last paragraph of this account.

    I was born in a little town of Georgia a few years after the close of the Civil War. I shall not mention the name of the town, because there are people still living there who could be connected with this narrative. I have only a faint recollection of the place of my birth. At times I can close my eyes, and call up in a dream-like way thin

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