Rating: 
Summary: Unknown classic
Review: Perhaps best known for writing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing , James Weldon Johnson wrote one of the first novels to probe the ambiguities of race, the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. As a boy, the fictional title character is sent North with his Mother to be raised in Connecticut. He does extremely well in school and is even something of a musical prodigy.But, he is stunned when one day in school a teacher asks the white students to stand, and scolds him when he joins them. He confronts his fair skinned mother and she reveals that she is indeed black and his father is a white Southern gentleman. His father later comes to visit, and even buys him a piano, but the child is unable to approach and deal with him. As a young man, the death of his mother & sale of their house leaves him with a small stake & he determines to attend college. Though qualified, he rules out Harvard for financial reasons & heads back down South to attend Atlanta University. However, his stake is stolen from his boarding house room before he can register & he ends up with a job in a cigar factory. When the factory closes, he heads North again, this time to New York City and discovers Ragtime music and shooting craps, excelling at the one & nearing ruin in the other. A white gentleman who has heard him play enters into an exclusive agreement to have him play at parties & subsequently takes him along on a tour of Europe. Inevitably, he is drawn back to America and to music. He tours the South collecting musical knowledge so that he will be able to compose a uniquely American and Black music. But his idyll is shattered when he sees a white lynch mob burn a black man. In the wake of this experience, he decides to "pass" for white--not due to fear or discouragement, but due to "Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals." Abandoning his musical ambitions, he takes a job as a clerk, does well investing in real estate & meets a white woman who he wishes to marry. After examining his conscience he decides to tell her that he is black. After taking some time to confront this fact, she consents to marriage. As the novel closes, the "ex-colored man" tells us: "My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage." And the reader can't help but feel profoundly ashamed of a system of racial oppression that forced a man to make these choices--a wonderful novel. GRADE: B+
Rating: 
Summary: Raises troubling issues of race still topical today.
Review: Ragtime music flavors the episodic "gaslight" era adventures of the nameless mixed-race narrator of this classic story as his crisis of racial identity deepens. His adventures carry him from a precocious childhood in Conecticut to painful yet eye-opening disappointment in Atlanta; on to coming-of-age experiences among colorful Cuban exiles in Florida; then north to the fast, seductive and dangerous night life of New York's Tenderloin district from which he barely escapes only to find himself bound for Paris, then London and Berlin. Later, in America's South, the awful terror of witnessing a burning-at-the-stake lynching draws him across the "color-line" to the white world and a troubled but secure existence. Published at the dawn of the 20th century, little more than a decade before the Harlem Renaissance, and believed at the time to be a real-life story. "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is a benchmark classic in the American literary tradition that ultimately led to Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man." This work is a fitting introduction to MasterBuy's Kente Classics audiobook series, literary works of commendable merit by African-Americans or dealing with themes unique to their lives. Publishers Weekly called Allen Gilmore's reading of this audiobook "smooth...and mellifluous." Jim Popoulous' ragtime piano accompaniment of Scott Joplin music adds colorful accents to the story's shifting fortunes. A brief biographical sketch of the author, James Weldon Johnson, a man of extraordinary talents, is included at the end of the audiobook and enriches the auditor's understanding of the man and his time. Regrettably, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" is Johnson's only novel. Yet, sadly, this is understandable considering that Johnson, like other African-American writers of his time, was fifty years ahead of the day when an audience large enough to sustain his work could be found. "Excellent Adaptation" -Publishers Weekly; "Recommended" -Library Journal: "[M]erits a wide audience" -Booklist; "Marvelous" -Black Caucus, American Library Journal Association; "Listen Up Awards: Best Audio-Ongoing Series: Kente Classics" -Publishers Weekly; "Singularly Brilliant" -Bookwatch
Rating: 
Summary: The ending cannot be justified
Review: The only thing that holds be back from giving this book a good review is the lunacy of the ending. I don't know what Johnson had in mind, but if he was seeking to create more ambivalence about what is and was a difficult issue when this book was written for many African Americans, he succeeded. I cannot in good conscience encourage anyone to read this, although the prose is truly masterful.
Rating: 
Summary: The autobiography of a real loser
Review: This book made me want to run to the bathroom with my hands covering my mouth. The plot is absurd, and epitomizes mediocre literature. Certainly wasn't a page turner, more of a page-flusher.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay, I guess
Review: This book would have recieved five stars if the narrator had been more likeable. His life story is fascinating and sad, but he is just down right concieted. Another reason I didn't like the narrator is that he didn't seem very reliable. I couldn't be sure that the information he was presenting was accurate (In other words, it was like the wolf's version of "The Three Little Pigs."). I could rattle off dozens of reasons why I did not like this character (in the end of the book, the biracial resolved that he would live as a person. However people precieved him, that is what he would be. He ended up living just as a white man.) but that would take days, so I won't.
Rating: 
Summary: Spellbinding and relevant
Review: This is a tragic book in a lot of ways. It is a reminder that America has not fullfilled her promise to all of her children. It would be great to read a book like this as an object lesson in the bigotry of the past. We have made some progress but there is still much to be done. James Weldon Johnson produced a wrenching tale. That it is somewhat autobiographical adds to the ambivalent narration. First the narrator feels shame in his heritage but then grows to accept himself and feel pride in who he is. This tells a tale that America is often loathe to hear but it is important nonetheless. The aspect of a mulatto man passing for white is sad. One should be allowed to feel pride in multiethnicity. This is a horrible stain on our culture that so many people had to live in denial of who they really were. This book is a valuable document of America's dark side. I would hope that it experiences a much deserved revival now that evidence of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings has reopened the discussion on this sad piece of our history. Read this book and weep but most of all read this book and learn.
Rating:
Summary: Harsh reminder of America's rascist "past"
Review: This is a tragic book in a lot of ways. It is a reminder that America has not fullfilled her promise to all of her children. It would be great to read a book like this as an object lesson in the bigotry of the past. We have made some progress but there is still much to be done. James Weldon Johnson produced a wrenching tale. That it is somewhat autobiographical adds to the ambivalent narration. First the narrator feels shame in his heritage but then grows to accept himself and feel pride in who he is. This tells a tale that America is often loathe to hear but it is important nonetheless. The aspect of a mulatto man passing for white is sad. One should be allowed to feel pride in multiethnicity. This is a horrible stain on our culture that so many people had to live in denial of who they really were. This book is a valuable document of America's dark side. I would hope that it experiences a much deserved revival now that evidence of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings has reopened the discussion on this sad piece of our history. Read this book and weep but most of all read this book and learn.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent study of the meaning of race
Review: This work is a truly great study of racial identity, showing that the lines of race are drawn more by culture than biology. Highly recommended reading! Oh, and to the latent racist who thought that the narrator was white and that Johnson was jealous of white people: WOW, you really missed the point, didn't you?
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