| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780809000326 | | Publisher: Hill & Wang | | Publish Date: 4/16/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 30166964 | | Item#: RT7GWF | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8H x 5.5L x 0.5T |
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| | | This book is an emotionally gripping novel of a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. It's influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale. 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.
| Author Bio| James Weldon Johnson | | Born to a Bahamanian mother and a free black man from Virginia, Johnson and his family moved to Jacksonville shortly before he was born. His father was a headwaiter at an top-drawer hotel, his mother a schoolteacher as well as a singer and poet. Both parents believed culture and education were good for people's character, and that racial integration began with art, music, and literature. Johnson attended Atlanta University and taught school, while writing poetry and songs. He also read law on his own and passed the Florida bar, but became a songwriter instead, first in partnership with his vaudeville-star brother, then with other collaborators. Eventually, however, songwriting wasn't enough for him, and he became interested in politics. He became active in the Republican party and in 1904 was appointed U.S. consul in Venezuela, followed by Nicaragua. During those years, he wrote his only novel, "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man". He subsequently worked for the NAACP, helping it expand from 68 to 300+ branches, and taught literature at Fisk University. He wrote poetry and edited several volumes of African-American poetry and spirituals. Johnson died in a car crash in 1938, en route to his summer home in Maine. |
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