Editorial Reviews
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Oprah Book Club® Selection,
September 1997: In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young
black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white
shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial
had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place,
there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty.
"I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not
go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time
what it would be..." So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J.
Gaines's powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A
Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the
law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social
convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation
town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the
small plantation church school. More than 75 years after the close of the
Civil War, antebellum attitudes still prevail: African Americans go to the
kitchen door when visiting whites and the two races are rigidly separated by
custom and by law. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by
resentment at his station in life, and angered by the injustice he sees all
around him, dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana
forever. But when Jefferson is convicted and sentenced to die, his
grandmother, Miss Emma, begs Grant for one last favor: to teach her grandson
to die like a man.
As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to
Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as
well: heroism is not always expressed through action--sometimes the simple
act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong,
unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying
offers a lesson for a lifetime.
From Publishers Weekly
Gaines's first novel in a
decade may be his crowning achievement. In this restrained but eloquent
narrative, the author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman again
addresses some of the major issues of race and identity in our time. The
story of two African American men struggling to attain manhood in a
prejudiced society, the tale is set in Bayonne, La. (the fictional community
Gaines has used previously) in the late 1940s. It concerns Jefferson, a
mentally slow, barely literate young man, who, though an innocent bystander
to a shootout between a white store owner and two black robbers, is
convicted of murder, and the sophisticated, educated man who comes to his
aid. When Jefferson's own attorney claims that executing him would be
tantamount to killing a hog, his incensed godmother, Miss Emma, turns to
teacher Grant Wiggins, pleading with him to gain access to the jailed youth
and help him to face his death by electrocution with dignity. As complex a
character as Faulkner's Quentin Compson, Grant feels mingled love, loyalty
and hatred for the poor plantation community where he was born and raised.
He longs to leave the South and is reluctant to assume the level of
leadership and involvement that helping Jefferson would require. Eventually,
however, the two men, vastly different in potential yet equally degraded by
racism, achieve a relationship that transforms them both. Suspense rises as
it becomes clear that the integrity of the entire local black community
depends on Jefferson's courage. Though the conclusion is inevitable, Gaines
invests the story with emotional power and universal resonance. BOMC and QPB
alternates.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers
to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
YA-- No breathless courtroom
triumphs or dramatic reprieves alleviate the sad progress toward execution
in this latest novel by the author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
(Bantam, 1982). The condemned man is Jefferson, a poorly educated man/child
whose only crimes are a dim intelligence, being in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and being black in rural Louisiana in the late 1940s. To
everyone, even his own defense attorney, he's an animal, too dumb to
understand what is happening to him. But his godmother, Miss Emma, decides
that Jefferson will die a man. To accomplish just that, she brings Grant
Wiggins, the teacher at the plantation's one-room school and narrator of the
novel, into the story. Emotionally blackmailed by two strong-willed old
ladies, Grant reluctantly begins visiting Jefferson, committing both men to
the painful task of self-discovery. As in his earlier novels, Gaines evokes
a sense of reality through rich detail and believable characters in this
simple, moving story. YAs who seek thought-provoking reading will enjoy this
glimpse of life in the rural South just before the civil rights movement.
- Carolyn E. Gecan, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers
to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
What do you tell an innocent
youth who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and now faces death in
the electric chair? What do you say to restore his self-esteem when his
lawyer has publicly described him as a dumb animal? What do you tell a youth
humiliated by a lifetime of racism so that he can face death with dignity?
The task belongs to Grant Wiggins, the teacher of the Negro plantation
school who narrates the story. Grant grew up on the Louisiana plantation but
broke away to go to the university. He returns to help his people but
struggles over "whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like
the nigger that I was supposed to be." The powerful message Grant tells the
youth transforms him from a "hog" to a hero, and the reader is not likely to
forget it, either. Gaines's earlier works include A Gathering of Old Men (
LJ 9/83) and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (Bantam, 1982). BOMC and
Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selections; previewed in Prepub Alert,
LJ 12/92.
- Joanne Snapp, Randolph-Macon Coll. , Ashland, Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers
to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From AudioFile
In the segregated rural
Louisiana of the 1940's a retarded African-American youth is wrongly
convicted of murder. Another African-American, a teacher, is persuaded to
visit the condemned man in his cell and convince him that he "ain't no hawg."
The relationship that grows between them and its effect on the teacher's
worldview are the heart of this bittersweet, humane novel by the author of
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. The audio abridgment isn't
particularly well-produced or narrated, yet--whether because of the strong
writing, the fascinating Creole milieu, the subtle quality of the acting or
another elusive quality--it's somehow riveting. Well worth the listen! Y.R.
(c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Kirkus Reviews
Two black men (one a teacher,
the other a death row inmate) struggle to live, and die, with dignity, in
Gaines's most powerful and moving work since The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman (1971). The year is 1948. Harry Truman may have integrated the Armed
Forces, but down in the small Cajun town of Bayonne, Louisiana, where the
blacks still shuffle submissively for their white masters, little has
changed since slavery. When a white liquor- store owner is killed during a
robbery attempt, along with his two black assailants, the innocent black
bystander Jefferson gets death, despite the defense plea that ``I would just
as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.'' Hog. The word lingers
like a foul odor and weighs as heavily as the sentence on Jefferson and the
woman who raised him, his ``nannan'' (godmother) Miss Emma. She needs an
image of Jefferson going to his death like a man, and she turns to the young
teacher at the plantation school for help. Meanwhile, Grant Wiggins (the
narrator) has his own problems. He loves his people but hates himself for
teaching on the white man's terms; visiting Jefferson in jail will just mean
more kowtowing, so he goes along reluctantly, prodded by his strong-willed
Tante Lou and his girlfriend Vivian. The first visits are a disaster:
Jefferson refuses to speak and will not eat his nannan's cooking, which
breaks the old lady's heart. But eventually Grant gets through to him (``a
hero does for others''); Jefferson eats Miss Emma's gumbo and astonishes
himself by writing whole pages in a diary--a miracle, water from the rock.
When he walks to the chair, he is the strongest man in the courthouse. By
containing unbearably painful emotions within simple declarative sentences
and everyday speech rhythms, Gaines has written a novel that is not only
never maudlin, but approaches the spare beauty of a classic. -- Copyright
©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text
refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Midwest Book Review
Set in a small Cajun community
in the late 1940's, A Lesson Before Dying is the heartbreaking and inspiring
new audio about the friendship to two black men. One wrongly condemned to
die and one who's persuaded to impart something of himself -- his learning
and pride. Jefferson is an unwitting and innocent party to a liquor store
shoot-out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, hi is convicted
of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for
the university has reluctantly 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. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to
understand the simple heroism of resisting (and defying) the expected.
Superb narration by Lionel Mark Smith and Toger Guenveur Smith.
Book Description
From the author of A Gathering
of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and
compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach
visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together
they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
Synopsis
Grant Wiggins, a
college-educated man who returns to his hometown to teach, forms an unlikely
bond with Jefferson, a young Black man convicted of murder and sentenced to
death, when he is asked to impart his learning and pride to the condemned
man.
Ingram
Set in a small Cajun community
in the late 1940s, "A Lesson Before Dying" is an "enormously moving" ("Los
Angeles Times") novel of one man condemned to die for a crime he did not
commit and a young man who visits him in his cell. In the end, the two men
forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of
resisting--and defying--the expected. Winner of the National Book Critics
Circle Award for Fiction.
From the Back Cover
"This majestic, moving noel is
an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed ad taught beyond the
rest of our lives."
--The Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Ernest J. Gaines was
born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, which is the
Bayonne of all his fictional works
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