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Books with author Ernest Gaines

  • The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Audio Cassette (Recorded Books, Inc., Aug. 16, 1994)
    This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollection of a 110-year-old black woman who was born a slave but who lived to see the black militancy of the 1960s. The secret of this book's success is the characterization of Miss Jane. She is a master of her people's language. But more than that, she is unsurpassed as a storyteller. "Ernest Gaines has written a book that comes down on the side of time, on the side of the future." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board) --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition. The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature Novel by Ernest J. Gaines, published in 1971. Set in rural southern Louisiana, the novel spans 100 years of American history--from the early 1860s to the onset of the civil rights movement in the 1960s--in following the life of the elderly Jane Pittman, who witnessed those years. A child at the end of the Civil War, Jane survives a massacre by former Confederate soldiers. She serves as a steadying influence for several black men who work hard to achieve dignity and economic as well as political equality. After the death of her husband, Joe Pittman, Jane becomes a committed Christian and a spiritual guide in her community. Spurred on by the violent death of a young community leader, Jane finally confronts a plantation owner who represents the white power structure to which she has always been subservient. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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  • A Lesson Before Dying

    Ernest T. Gaines

    Paperback (Vintage, Jan. 1, 1993)
    Trade paperback.
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  • A Lesson Before Dying

    Ernest Gaines

    Audio Cassette (Media Books Llc, Jan. 1, 2001)
    None
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  • Gathering of Old Men

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Paperback (Black Swan, Jan. 1, 1985)
    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. "Poignant, powerful, earthy...a novel of Southern racial confrontation in which a group of elderly black men band together against whites who seek vengeance for the murder of one of their own."--Booklist"A fine novel...there is a denouement that will shock and move readers as much as it does the characters."--Philadelphia InquirerFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
  • Lesson Before Dying

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Audio CD (Books on Tape, Feb. 7, 2006)
    None
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  • The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Library Binding
    "This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has 'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other great works The Odyssey for the way his heroine's travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn for the clarity of her voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story in it all." -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek."Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner's Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld, LifeFrom the Paperback edition.
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  • A Gathering of Old Men

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Library Binding (Paw Prints 2008-06-26, June 26, 2008)
    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. "Poignant, powerful, earthy...a novel of Southern racial confrontation in which a group of elderly black men band together against whites who seek vengeance for the murder of one of their own."--Booklist"A fine novel...there is a denouement that will shock and move readers as much as it does the characters."--Philadelphia InquirerFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
  • The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Hardcover (Doubleday, Jan. 20, 1987)
    "This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has 'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other great works The Odyssey for the way his heroine's travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn for the clarity of her voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story in it all." -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek."Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner's Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld, LifeFrom the Paperback edition.
  • A Lesson Before Dying

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Library Binding (Demco Media, June 1, 1994)
    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
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  • A GATHERING Of OLD MEN. A Novel.

    Ernest J. Gaines

    Hardcover (Alfred A. Knopf,, Jan. 1, 1983)
    None
  • A Gathering of Old Men

    Ernest J. Gaines

    School & Library Binding (San Val, June 1, 1992)
    None
  • A Lesson Before Dying

    Ernest J. Gaines, Jay Long

    Audio CD (Random House Audio, May 17, 2005)
    From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. 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.