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The protagonist of this fictional autobiography wrestles with race in America from the perspective of someone who learns that he is considered black but also that he can pass as white if he wants to. His personal ambitiousness and racial ambivalence makes him a sort of American Hamlet: undone by indecision. Will he be “a credit to his race” by advancing an African-American heritage he loves and appreciates in the face of a hostile culture, or will he retreat into the mediocrity of a safe, white, middle-class family life?
Along the way, he shares his penetrating observations about race relations in the American north and south, about the “freemasonry” of subterranean black American culture, about the emerging bohemian jazz subculture in New York City, and about traditions of African American religious music and oratory.
250 Reviews
Bryant
Created 18 days agoNaturally Danni
Created 21 days ago
Hooman404
Created about 2 months agoRenee
Created about 2 months ago
“A very interesting and revealing novel written by James Weldon Johnson. While I found the main protagonist’s “tragic mulatto dilema” to be tiring, repetitive and hard to stomach, I think Johnson wrote book to be a critique of the racist system of Jim Crow within the U.S., and also as a satirical (yet all too real circumstance) mirror to Black folk about the folly of passing. Quickly to the point: be careful of what you ask for because you might get it. And it’s not all milk and honey.”About James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novel, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which later became known as the Negro National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
Other books by James Weldon Johnson
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