Customer Reviews

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

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Perhaps best known for writing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing , James Weldon Johnson wrote one of the first novels to probe the ambiguities of race, the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. As a boy, the fictional title character is sent North with his Mother to be raised in Connecticut. He does extremely well in school and is even something of a musical prodigy.

But, he is stunned when one day in school a teacher asks the white students to stand, and scolds him when he joins them. He confronts his fair skinned mother and she reveals that she is indeed black and his father is a white Southern gentleman. His father later comes to visit, and even buys him a piano, but the child is unable to approach and deal with him.

As a young man, the death of his mother & sale of their house leaves him with a small stake & he determines to attend college. Though qualified, he rules out Harvard for financial reasons & heads back down South to attend Atlanta University. However, his stake is stolen from his boarding house room before he can register & he ends up with a job in a cigar factory.

When the factory closes, he heads North again, this time to New York City and discovers Ragtime music and shooting craps, excelling at the one & nearing ruin in the other. A white gentleman who has heard him play enters into an exclusive agreement to have him play at parties & subsequently takes him along on a tour of Europe.

Inevitably, he is drawn back to America and to music. He tours the South collecting musical knowledge so that he will be able to compose a uniquely American and Black music. But his idyll is shattered when he sees a white lynch mob burn a black man. In the wake of this experience, he decides to "pass" for white--not due to fear or discouragement, but due to "Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals."

Abandoning his musical ambitions, he takes a job as a clerk, does well investing in real estate & meets a white woman who he wishes to marry. After examining his conscience he decides to tell her that he is black. After taking some time to confront this fact, she consents to marriage.

As the novel closes, the "ex-colored man" tells us: "My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."

And the reader can't help but feel profoundly ashamed of a system of racial oppression that forced a man to make these choices--a wonderful novel.

GRADE: B+

This fictional book is very powerful! Great freebie. And no, this is not the author's "tale". I am sure some of the struggles faced are based on the author's vast knowledge but this is not James Weldon Johnson's word-for-word life story, though it obviously is based on details from his personal life.

from Wikipedia:

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man", living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by "passing" and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man.

Though the title suggests otherwise, the book is not an autobiography but a novel. However, the book is based on the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his own life. Weldon's text is an example of a roman à clef. (Roman à clef is a term used for a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction)

This was my first kindle book and once I started reading I could not stop. This is a free ebook that was worth every moment. I recommend this book to everyone. This book was very thought provoking and I think anyone can benefit from this story.

Many novels of the African-American experience in the United States use the theme of "passing". These novels generally involve a light-complexioned African-American who can "pass" for white. Among other things, novels based on a theme of "passing" allow the character and the author to comment upon black-white relationships in the United States from both sides -- from the black experience and from the white experience.

Both white and black authors have made extensive use of the theme of "passing". The earliest novel involving "passing" of which I am aware is by William Dean Howells in his short 1891 book, "An Imperative Duty" which dealt with an inter-racial marriage. The African-American novelist Nella Larsen wrote a novel titled "Passing" set in the Harlem Renaissance. More recently, Philip Roth's novel "The Human Stain" involves the story of Professor Coleman Silk, a distinguished academic and student of the classics who passes for many years as white.

Coleman Silk is the successor to the protagonist of James Weldon Johnson's only novel, "The Autobiography of an ex-colored Man" written in 1912. The unnamed protagonist of the book is an individual, like Roth's character Coleman Silk, with great intellectual and artistic gifts who is torn between the opportunities open to him as an, apparently, white person and his strong sense of black identity. Like Coleman Silk and the characters in most novels involving the theme of "passing", Johnson's protagonist marries a white woman and lives a life plagued with guilt regarding his abandonment of his heritage as an African-American. Johnson's short novel is, to my mind, the best written on the theme of "passing", and it is a fine novel indeed. The book initially was published anonymously. The writing is so powerful and believable that many readers took the book for a true autobiography until Johnson acknowledged his authorship in 1914. Many years later, Johnson wrote his own autobiography, titled "Along This Way" in part to show that the story of his own life was not the story of the protagonist in the "Autobiography".

Johnson's story shows how his protagonist goes back and forth, both internally and in the outward events of life, about whether to make his way in the white or in the black world. He ultimately finds himself successful but unhappy. In addition to the story line of the book, Johnson uses the "passing" theme to allow many reflective passages by characters in the book on racial relationships in the United States early in the 20th Century. The most famous such scene occurs as the protagonist travels in a "smoking car" for whites on a train in the segregated South. He participates in a discussion among several white men of varied backgrounds on the "race question" as it was viewed at the time. There is also a chilling scene in the book involving a lynching, the burning alive of a black person. Johnson worked fervently in the latter years of his life to secure the passage of anti-lynching legislation in Congress.

But Johnson's novel includes a great deal more than a consideration of race issues. The book offers an outstanding picture of life in early twentieth Century America -- in the South and in Johnson's beloved New York City. The book is filled with pictures of dives and gambling dens and of the trade of cigar making in both South and North. It is filled with the love of the piano and of classical music. Most strikingly, the book has the spirit and feel of ragtime, which reached the height of its popularity during the years in which the book appeared. Johnson shows great appreciation for this product of American culture.

The book also illustrates some universal themes. The protagonist is troubled, specifically, by the conflict between his identity as an African-American and his wish to succeed as a white person. But the broader themes of the book are the consequences of lack of self-knowledge, the role of chance in human life, and the consequences of a certain sense of purposelessness and frustration, which plague many individuals separately from any consideration of race. Johnson develops these themes eloquently and ties them in well with his theme of "passing".

Johnson's novel is an important work of American fiction which deserves to be read.

Done in two days!!!This was an extremely insightful book that proved to be very thought provoking. I couldn't put this book down, proved to be one of the finest I have ever read. While not a true autobio, the tale is wonderfully told and it's free....impossible to beat!

In most literature dealing with race relations, we get either the black perspective or the white perspective. This book is a refreshing reminder that there are shades of gray as well. Johnson's prose is very fluid and, unlike some other reviewrs, I found the story line engaging. Finally, a remark about the last line--whether or not one agrees with Johnson's assessment, it is certainly the type of statement that stays with the reader long after the book has been put down.

For a book which was first published in 1912, this is an amazingly relevant work for today. Johnson's novel (hidden in the form of an autobiography) graphically looks at relations between the races in American. The nameless main character is born in the South to an African-American mother and a white Southern aristocrat. He and his mother move to Connecticut when he is very young, allowing Johnson to show us the benevolent face of pervasive racism of the United States. Johnson avoids the easy "good" vs. "evil" view of the oppressed vs. the oppressors. Instead, the narrator becomes a permanent outcast, returning to the South upon the death of his mother and then to the ragtime era New York City. The style of the novel is clear and extremely readable--and very current. The end of the novel dives deep into the issue of racism, causing both black and white readers to question their long-held assumptions about who they are and who they appear to be to others.

This is a tragic book in a lot of ways. It is a reminder that America has not fullfilled her promise to all of her children. It would be great to read a book like this as an object lesson in the bigotry of the past. We have made some progress but there is still much to be done. James Weldon Johnson produced a wrenching tale. That it is somewhat autobiographical adds to the ambivalent narration. First the narrator feels shame in his heritage but then grows to accept himself and feel pride in who he is. This tells a tale that America is often loathe to hear but it is important nonetheless. The aspect of a mulatto man passing for white is sad. One should be allowed to feel pride in multiethnicity. This is a horrible stain on our culture that so many people had to live in denial of who they really were. This book is a valuable document of America's dark side. I would hope that it experiences a much deserved revival now that evidence of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings has reopened the discussion on this sad piece of our history. Read this book and weep but most of all read this book and learn.

This story is a very emotional recollection of a man who was both black and white. A fictional account from an autobiographical standpoint of what such a life would look like, James Weldon Johnson takes us on a journey full of sorrow, bad mistakes, a glimpse of happiness, and a life lived around the world. We see the narrator has he grows, as he discovers his heritage, as he loses himself to his desires, and as he finally realizes the course of his life.

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It was seriously the LAST paragraph that did it for me. Honestly, I had no idea what I really thought of the book until I read the last paragraph. It was crazy, going on a journey like this one and getting so acquainted with the characters, and still being unsure of how I felt. It had amazing writing, great characters, and awesome facts to back up the culture - and still it was missing something. It was just...empty. Despite all the facts and character development, despite all the places the narrator went and all the people he met, I felt that he didn't do anything. He waltzed through life with rich people, as a gambler, as a traveller, always searching for something more, always selfish. Even when he finally decides to do the right thing, he gets distracted. I wanted him so badly to do something worthwhile.

Seriously, the LAST paragraph, maybe the last two paragraphs, but really the very last, turned the whole book around and took me by surprise. And while before I wasn't sure if I would recommend it, now I know that I would recommend it highly. It frustrated me, it made me feel, and it surprised me. Great book!

Favorite character: the "girlfriend" or the "widow". A tie between them.

Favorite aspect: Everything. But to name just a bit of it: foreign language, the way the narrator describes different cities and how the people in them live, the talks about mulatto folk in the South and in the North.... I really could go on!

One word to sum up this book: Surprising. Really surprising. Please read this book!

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a insightful and captivating story that examines and explores what race relations in the early twentieth century where like. It is told though the eyes of a biracial man as he sets out on a journey across the world to find his self identity and place in the world. My favorite thing about the book was that when the main character travels around the world. The locations and people have such lively and colorful descriptions they almost seemed real.
The book was written in 1912 by James Weldon Johnson who wrote the book as if it was a factual biography. The story never really happened, but is written with such great detail and depth it feels like could have happened. This book is a must read for anyone who enjoys reading historical fiction.

Mrs. Sage's Class

Greg