Publisher Description
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has 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 and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected.
Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.
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"What a wonderful book. Really captures the struggle of an educated black man who returns to his home town after graduating college. He is asked to help a man who has been unjustly accused of killing someone accept his fate. It is his job to transform him from a "hog" into a man. This becomes a struggle for the whole town identity."
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Robin (5 out of 5 stars)
About Ernest J. Gaines
Ernest J. Gaines is a writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His 1993 novel, A Lesson before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1997. In 2004, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
About the Narrators
A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, who left his hometown for the university, has 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 and impart his learning and his pride to Jefferson before his death. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and defying—the expected.
Ernest J. Gaines brings to this novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, highly praised works of fiction.
Roger Guenveur Smith, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor, writer, and director whose work has been distinguished with the Obie, Peabody, Audelco, Bessie, Helen Hayes, Barrymore, and NAACP Image Awards. He has served as artist in residence at the University of California, as NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at the Mark Taper Forum, and has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Charleston. His many collaborations with director Spike Lee include Malcolm X, Summer of Sam, the telefilm version of A Huey P. Newton Story, and his improvised creation of the stuttering hero Smiley for the Oscar-nominated Do the Right Thing. His eclectic range of screen credits also includes King of New York, Deep Cover, Eve’s Bayou, All About the Benjamins, the telefilms Hamlet and The Color of Courage, and the innovative HBO series Oz and K Street.