A Lesson Before Dying
From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of...
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From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
show less
Format: audiobook
ISBN:
9780739323670 (0739323679)
Publish date: May 17th 2005
Publisher: Random House Audio
Minutes: 7
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Novels,
Academic,
School,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
American,
Historical Fiction,
Adult,
African American,
Southern
This book asks one big question: How much are we obligated to the community we grew up in? The protagonist, Grant Wiggins, is an educated man living in the impoverished rural Louisiana town of his birth, and he has one foot out the door [the first line of the novel is, "I was not there, yet I was th...
Although it took me a while to truly empathize with the main character as he seemed obnoxious and self-absorbed in the first half, this was a great story, with a powerful message and a great sense of time and place.
“But let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.” - Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying. Jefferson, an African-American man living in Loui...
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10373250
An incredible book.At first it was hard to get into because the narrative felt sort of dry and disinterested, but as I read along, I realized that was the point. Our narrator is worn out, tired of being a teacher, which he doesn't like, because he sees it as the only thing an educated black man can ...
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