Books with title The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is the fictional account of the life of a young American man in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With his bi-racial heritage, the Ex-Colored Man is faced with the choice of embracing his black culture and its ragtime music, or passing as a white man and living a mediocre middle-class existence. While not actually an autobiography, Johnson based the book on his own life and the lives of people he knew.

James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man takes place in post Reconstruction era America and follows the story of a young biracial male. Johnson poses a complex dilemma: because the "Ex-Colored Man," which is the only name by which the protagonist is referred, represents what, at the time was, a social contradiction of race and culture, he is forced to choose which aspect of his heritage to publicly express. His options are to embrace his black heritage and culture, or to pass as a white man cloaked in middle-class, mediocre obscurity. Johnson's novel explores racial tensions in late nineteenth and early twentieth century culture through this poignant coming-of-age story.

Excerpt from The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored ManThese pages also reveal the unsuspected fact that prejudice against the Negro is exerting a pressure, which, in New York and other large cities where the opportunity is open, is actually and constantly forcing an unascertainable number of fair-complexioned colored people over into the white race.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man explores the intricacies of racial identity through the eventful life of its mixed-race narrator. James Weldon Johnson tells his story where his mulatto mother, aided by monthly checks from his white father, is able to provide a secure and cultured environment. Learning of his black heritage by accident he experiences the first of several identity shifts that eventually finds him opting for membership in white society. Johnson's theme of moral cowardice sets his tragic story of color lines at the turn of the century--from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America. "This vivid and startlingly new picture of conditions brought about by the race question in the United States makes no special plea for the Negro, but shows in a dispassionate, though sympathetic, manner conditions as they actually exist between the whites and blacks to-day."

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by James Weldon Johnson is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of James Weldon Johnson then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

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