The Autobiography of an ExColored Ma..., James Weldon Johnson
The Autobiography of an ExColored Ma..., James Weldon Johnson
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Author: James Weldon Johnson

Narrator: Alan Bomar Jones

Unabridged: 5 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/20/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. In the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans.

Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century—from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. This is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America, a hymn to the anguish of forging an identity in a nation obsessed with color.

About James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. James is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. His most famous book is The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. He also published The Book of American Negro Spirituals, Black Manhattan, and Negro Americans, What Now? One of the first African American professors at New York University, James also served as a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lawyer on February 04, 2013

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man: James Weldon Johnson's novel of race and identity "You are young, gifted, and Black. We must begin to tell our young, There's a world waiting for you, Yours is the quest that's just begun.--James Weldon Johnson James Weldon Johnson Johnson lived an extra......more

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

What an extraordinary novel! It's difficult to believe such a short work can contain so much. First there is the story itself, which includes among other things a detailed and colorful explanation of the Cakewalk, the story of the rise of Ragtime, the beauty of the music of the Fisk Jubilee Singers,......more

Goodreads review by Donna on August 02, 2020

My husband and I read this book together, and we were both so glad we did! I found it at a book sale. The book was short and the price was low. What did I have to lose? This story is partly autobiographical. Published in 1912, it tells the account of a fair-skinned black man who can “pass” as white.......more

Goodreads review by Keith on March 31, 2025

Incredible book great story well written.. I’m so changed by the words in this book Makes me look at the struggles of the Black man in a different light.. It was then as it is now no matter light or dark a black person is still treated as a black person. That’s a shame that it’s still that way.. Awe......more

Goodreads review by Monique on July 07, 2020

This is a really hard review for me to write there is just so much to say about the book and I have no idea where to start. And if I said all that I wanted to say, this review would end up a term paper instead of a simple review. Simply stated The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored is about a mulatto man......more