Background
Gaines, Ernest James was born on January 15, 1933 in Oscar, Louisiana, United States. Son of Manuel and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines.
(The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a mi...)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a million copies nationwide since its publication in 1971, making the fictional character of Miss Jane so real many people don't know she exists only in the imagination of Louisiana-born author Ernest J. Gaines. Miss Jane is 100 years old when she is interviewed by an area high school teacher looking to teach his students more about plantation society in the deep South. Her story is not only a vivid picture of the South before the dawn of the civil rights era, but also a story of one woman's survival against overwhelming odds. A stunning autobiography of a courageous woman who won her battles with grace and dignity. Born a slave and freed when she was ten, Jane leaves the plantation of her childhood and heads in the direction of Ohio in search of a white abolitionist who once befriended her. Accompanied by Ned, a young orphan, Jane struggles to get out of Louisiana. What happens in the years that follow is a tale of loss and heartache and renewed hope, imprinted on its aged teller's face like furrows in a russet field. Now, in the racial upheavals of the '60s, Miss Jane brings closure to one generation, and inspiration to the next. Includes plastic kit casing with velcro closures. Kit contents: Paperback book, Audio CDs.
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(A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community ...)
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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(By the author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiogra...)
By the author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Catherine Carmier is a compelling love story set in a deceptively bucolic Louisiana countryside, where blacks, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy coexistence. After living in San Francisco for ten years, Jackson returns home to his benefactor, Aunt Charlotte. Surrounded by family and old friends, he discovers that his bonds to them have been irreparably rent by his absence. In the midst of his alienation from those around him, he falls in love with Catherine Carmier, setting the stage for conflicts and confrontations which are complex, tortuous, and universal in their implications.
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(Get your "A" in gear! They're today's most popular study...)
Get your "A" in gear! They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception SparkNotes™ has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. SparkNotes'™ motto is Smarter, Better, Faster because: · They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts. · They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them. · The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time. And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!
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(The adage says that there are two sides to every story, b...)
The adage says that there are two sides to every story, but as most contemporary literature teachers can attest, there are many sides to every story-or at least many ways of looking at a story. Prestwick House's Multiple Perspectives Lesson Guides provide the high school teacher with everything she needs to guide her students through the study of the titles she teaches from a variety of critical viewpoints. Every Multiple Perspectives Lesson Guide provides a general introduction to the work (plot summary, introductions to key characters, brief discussions of social and historical background); clear and concise explanations of three critical theories (including feminism, Marxism, Freudianism, new historicism, and formalism); and reading, writing, and discussion activities designed to help students probe the familiar text in new and deeper ways. Teachers who want to take their teaching of literature beyond the tired plot pyramid and want their students to experience the books they love more than reader-response alone will let them, will find Prestwick House Multiple Perspectives Lessons Guides to be an invigorating addition to their course syllabus.
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("This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recol...)
"This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has 'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other great works The Odyssey for the way his heroine's travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn for the clarity of her voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story in it all." -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek. "Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner's Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld, Life
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(Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his prize-winning THE ...)
Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his prize-winning THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, but OF LOVE AND DUST has equal power and fascination. It zeros in on an explosion in the making between two men, one black and one white, trapped in the vise of Southern back country prejudice. When young Marcus is bonded out of jail, he is sent to the Hebert Plantation to work in the fields. He treats Sidney Bonbon, the Cajun overseer, with contempt and Bonbon retaliates by working him nearly to death. Marcus decides to take his revenge.
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(In these five stories, Gaines returns to the cane fields,...)
In these five stories, Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. As rendered by Gaines, this country becomes as familiar, and as haunted by cruelty, suffering, and courage, as Ralph Ellison's Harlem or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. STORIES INCLUDE: A Long Day in November The Sky Is Gray Three Men Bloodline Just Like a Tree
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( One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying...)
One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying mother, who tells him that, come tomorrow morning, they are leaving to go to "Gran'mom's" house—without Sonny's father, Eddie. Later that morning, Sonny witnesses a fight between his parents, which revolves around his father having stayed out late the night before because his car had broken down. Eddie has apparently been neglecting his wife and son, devoting his free time instead to repairing his old car. In order to win back his wife, Eddie—with Sonny in tow—pays a visit to Madame Toussaint, an old lady knowledgeable in the ways of voodoo, who tells Eddie that the only way to save his marriage is by burning his car to the ground. This unforgettable story leads the reader through an eventful day on a Southern sugarcane plantation, and shows, through the eyes of a child, what life was like in the rural South of the 1940s. This new edition of A Long Day in November features Ernest J. Gaines's original introduction, as well as the black-and-white illustrations that accompanied the first edition of the book. Ernest J. Gaines's 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. Gaines has been a MacArthur Foundation fellow, awarded the National Humanities Medal, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier. He lives in Oscar, Louisiana.
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(An Oprah Book Club selection Winner of the National Book ...)
An Oprah Book Club selection Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize In a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, a young black man named Jefferson witnesses a liquor store shootout in which three men are killed. The only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Gaines explores the deep prejudice of the American South in the tradition of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Toni Morrison's Beloved. A Lesson Before Dying is a richly compassionate and deeply moving novel, the story of a young black man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, and a teacher who hopes to ease his burden before the execution.
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Fulfill state-mandated objectives and national guidelines with Prestwick House Reproducible Activity Packs. Activities easily relate outside historical references, vital literary vocabulary, and detailed plot and themes analysis. Activities include: • Role playing • Creating dramatization • Five modes of writing • Completing maps and charts • Creating collages • Drawing editorial cartoons • Staging sets ans scenes • Responding to photographs and pictures • Conducting surveys • Creating scenarios • And more
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(The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for t...)
The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with Arts Midwest. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AQJP0S/?tag=2022091-20
(Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A G...)
Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A Gathering of Old Men is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man. "Poignant, powerful, earthy...a novel of Southern racial confrontation in which a group of elderly black men band together against whites who seek vengeance for the murder of one of their own."--Booklist "A fine novel...there is a denouement that will shock and move readers as much as it does the characters."--Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679738908/?tag=2022091-20
(The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a mi...)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a million copies nationwide since its publication in 1971, making the fictional character of Miss Jane so real many people don't know she exists only in the imagination of Louisiana-born author Ernest J. Gaines. Miss Jane is 100 years old when she is interviewed by an area high school teacher looking to teach his students more about plantation society in the deep South. Her story is not only a vivid picture of the South before the dawn of the civil rights era, but also a story of one woman's survival against overwhelming odds. A stunning autobiography of a courageous woman who won her battles with grace and dignity. Born a slave and freed when she was ten, Jane leaves the plantation of her childhood and heads in the direction of Ohio in search of a white abolitionist who once befriended her. Accompanied by Ned, a young orphan, Jane struggles to get out of Louisiana. What happens in the years that follow is a tale of loss and heartache and renewed hope, imprinted on its aged teller's face like furrows in a russet field. Now, in the racial upheavals of the '60s, Miss Jane brings closure to one generation, and inspiration to the next
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QRN1HM/?tag=2022091-20
(In this collection of stories and essays, the beloved aut...)
In this collection of stories and essays, the beloved author of the classic, best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares with us the inspirations behind his books, how he came to choose the vocation of a writer, the childhood in rural Louisiana that he continually re-creates in his fiction, and his portrayal of the black experience in the South. Told in the simple and powerful prose that is a hallmark of his craft, these writings faithfully evoke the sorrows and joys of rustic Southern life. They begin with Gaines’s move to California at the age of fifteen to complete school. Missing the Louisiana countryside where he was raised by his aunt propelled him to find books in the library that would invoke the sights, smells, and locution of his native home. Gaines never agreed with the authors’ portrayal of black people: “either she was a mammy, or he was a Tom,” he explains in “Miss Jane and I.” From that initial disappointment stemmed a literary career that has spanned forty years and includes five novels, which in the words of USA Today reviewer Suzanne Freeman have “made the smallest truths, the everyday sorrows of hard choices, add up to moments of pure illumination.” These are cherished and popular books like The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and the 1993 blockbuster A Lesson Before Dying, which has sold more than two million copies around the world, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 1997 was picked for Oprah’s Book Club. It has been continually selected for City Read programs and praised by critics as “an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives” (Charles R. Larson, Chicago Tribune). In the essay “Writing A Lesson Before Dying,” Gaines describes the real-life murder case that gave him the idea for his masterpiece. Included here are short stories that transport us to the rural Louisiana of the 1940s and the influences that shaped him–most lastingly, the people and the places of Gaines’s own past. This wonderful collection of autobiographical essays and fictional pieces is a revelation of both man and writer.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400044723/?tag=2022091-20
Famous award-winning African-American Novelist
Gaines, Ernest James was born on January 15, 1933 in Oscar, Louisiana, United States. Son of Manuel and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines.
Bachelor, San Francisco State College, 1957. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Denison University, 1980. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Brown University, 1985.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Bard College, 1985. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Whittier College, 1986. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Louisiana State University, 1987.
Professor English and resident writer University Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, since 1983. Writer in residence Denison University, 1971, Stanford University, 1981, Whittier College, 1986, currently at University Southwestern Louisiana. Visiting professor Whittier College, 1983.
(In this collection of stories and essays, the beloved aut...)
(An Oprah Book Club selection Winner of the National Book ...)
(The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a mi...)
(The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has sold over a mi...)
(By the author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiogra...)
(In these five stories, Gaines returns to the cane fields,...)
(The adage says that there are two sides to every story, b...)
(Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A G...)
("This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recol...)
( One morning, six-year old Sonny is awoken by his crying...)
(The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for t...)
(Get your "A" in gear! They're today's most popular study...)
(Fulfill state-mandated objectives and national guidelines...)
(A Lesson Before Dying, is set in a small Cajun community ...)
(A Lesson Before Dying A LESSON BEFORE DYING By Gaines, Er...)
(Book by Romulus Linney, Ernest J Gaines)
(A Lesson Before Dying Gaines, Ernest J.)
(One of Oprah's books, and a classic.)
(the big read program)
(Med Sz Pb)
(Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his prize-winning THE ...)
Married Dianne Saulney.