Download or read book The Tragedy of Brady Sims written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A courthouse shooting leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order—in the final novella by the beloved Ernest J. Gaines. After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. When the editor of the local newspaper asks his cub reporter to dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, he heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who narrate with empathy, sadness, humor, and a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims—an honorable, just, and unsparing man who with his tough love had been handed the task of keeping the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana in line to protect them from the unjust world in which they lived. And when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning. In the telling, we learn the story of a small southern town, divided by race, and the black community struggling to survive even as many of its inhabitants head off northwards during the Great Migration.

Download or read book The Tragedy of Brady Sims written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A courthouse shooting leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who "whipped children" to keep order—in the final novella by the beloved Ernest J. Gaines. After Brady Sims pulls out a gun in a courtroom and shoots his own son, who has just been convicted of robbery and murder, he asks only to be allowed two hours before he'll give himself up to the sheriff. When the editor of the local newspaper asks his cub reporter to dig up a "human interest" story about Brady, he heads for the town's barbershop. It is the barbers and the regulars who hang out there who narrate with empathy, sadness, humor, and a profound understanding the life story of Brady Sims—an honorable, just, and unsparing man who with his tough love had been handed the task of keeping the black children of Bayonne, Louisiana in line to protect them from the unjust world in which they lived. And when his own son makes a fateful mistake, it is up to Brady to carry out the necessary reckoning. In the telling, we learn the story of a small southern town, divided by race, and the black community struggling to survive even as many of its inhabitants head off northwards during the Great Migration.

Download or read book A Gathering of Old Men written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man--set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The Village Voice called A Gathering of Old Men “the best-written novel on Southern race relations in over a decade.”

Download or read book Mozart and Leadbelly written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved author of the classic, best-selling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares the inspirations behind his books and his reasons for becoming a writer in this collection of stories and essays. Told in the simple and powerful prose that is a hallmark of his craft, these writings by Ernest J. Gaines faithfully evoke the sorrows and joys of rustic Southern life. From his depiction of his childhood move to California — a move that propelled him to find books that conjured the sights, smells, and locution of his native Louisiana home — to his description of the real-life murder case that gave him the idea for his masterpiece; this wonderful collection is a revelation of both man and writer.

Download or read book Catherine Carmier written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling debut love story set in a deceptively bucolic Louisiana countryside, where blacks, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy coexistence--by the award-winning author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. 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.

Download or read book The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Grand, robust, a rich and big novel.”—Alice Walker, The New York Times Book Review “In [Jane Pittman], Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure. . . . Gaines’s 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 [Pittman’s] voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story of it all.”—Newsweek Miss Jane Pittman. She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.

Download or read book Navigating the Fiction of Ernest J Gaines written by Keith Clark and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the South’s most revered writers, Ernest J. Gaines attracts both popular and academic audiences. Gaines’s unique literary style, depiction of the African American experience, and celebration of the rural South’s oral tradition have brought him critical praise and numerous accolades, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel A Lesson before Dying. In this welcome guide to Gaines’s fiction, Keith Clark offers insightful analyses of his novels and short stories. Clark’s close readings elucidate Gaines’s more acclaimed works—including The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Gathering of Old Men—while also introducing lesser-known but masterfully crafted pieces, such as the story “Three Men” and the civil rights novel In My Father’s House. Gaines’s most recent work, The Tragedy of Brady Sims, receives here one of its first critical examinations. Clark shows how the themes of Gaines’s literary oeuvre, produced over the past fifty years, dovetail with issues reverberating in twenty-first-century America: race and the criminal justice system; black masculinity; the environment; the enduring impact of slavery; black southern women’s voices; and blacks’ and whites’ interpretation of history. In addition to textual discussions, the book includes an interview Clark conducted with Gaines at the writer’s home in New Roads, Louisiana, in 2014, further illuminating the inner workings and personality of this eminent literary artist.

Download or read book Of Love and Dust written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of Marcus: bonded out of jail where he has been awaiting trial for murder, he is sent to the Hebert plantation to work in the fields. There he encounters conflict with the overseer, Sidney Bonbon, and a tale of revenge, lust and power plays out between Marcus, Bonbon, BonBon's mistress Pauline, and BonBon's wife Louise.

Download or read book In My Father s House written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past... In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin—a respected minister and civil rights leader—comes face to face with the sins of his youth in the person of Robert X, a young, unkempt stranger who arrives in town for a mysterious "meeting" with the Reverend. In the confrontation between the two, the young man's secret burden explodes into the open, and Phillip Martin begins a long-neglected journey into his youth to discover how destructive his former life was, for himself and for those around him. “…on every page there's an authentic moment, or a dead-right knot of conversation, or a truer-than-true turn of phrase…”—Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book A Lesson Before Dying written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-01-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. "An instant classic." —Chicago Tribune A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), from the critically acclaimed author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. "A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer." —Boston Globe "Enormously moving.... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." —Los Angeles Times “A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book Bloodline written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these five stories, Ernest 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. Gaines introduces us to this world through the eyes of guileless children and wizened jailbirds, black tenants and white planters. He shows his characters eking out a living and making love, breaking apart aand coming together. And on every page he captures the soul of black community whose circumstances make even the slightest assertion of self-respect an act of majestic—and sometimes suicidal—heroism. Bloodline is a miracle of storytelling. STORIES INCLUDE: A Long Day in November The Sky Is Gray Three Men Bloodline Just Like a Tree

Download or read book The Girls of Slender Means New Directions Classic written by Muriel Spark and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-17 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions," begins The Girls of Slender Means, Dame Muriel Spark's tragic and rapier-witted portrait of a London ladies' hostel just emerging from the shadow of World War II. Like the May of Teck Club itself—"three times window shattered since 1940 but never directly hit"—its lady inhabitants do their best to act as if the world were back to normal: practicing elocution, and jostling over suitors and a single Schiaparelli gown. The novel's harrowing ending reveals that the girls' giddy literary and amorous peregrinations are hiding some tragically painful war wounds. Chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the Best Modern Novels in the Sunday Times of London, The Girls of Slender Means is a taut and eerily perfect novel by an author The New York Times has called "one of this century's finest creators of comic-metaphysical entertainment."

Download or read book Ernest J Gaines written by Marcia Gaudet and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the acclaimed author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) has been publishing stories and novels for more than sixty years. His brilliant portrayals of race, community, and culture in rural south Louisiana have made him one of the most respected and beloved living American writers. Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations brings together the author’s own thoughts and words in interviews that range from 1994 to 2017, discussing his life, his work, and his literary legacy. The interviews cover all of Gaines’s works, including his two latest books, Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005) and The Tragedy of Brady Sims (2017). The book provides a retrospective of his work from the viewpoint of a senior writer, now eighty-five years old, and gives an important international perspective on Gaines and his work. Among the many things Gaines discusses in his interviews are the recurrent themes in his works: the search for manhood, the importance of personal responsibility and standing with dignity, the problems of fathers and sons, and the challenges of race and racism in America. He examines his fictional world and his strong sense of place, his role as teacher and mentor, the importance of strong women in his life, and the influence of spirituality, religion, and music on his work. He also talks about storytelling, the nature of narrative, writing as a journey, and how he sees himself as a storyteller.

Download or read book Emil and Berta written by Sophia Christine Murphy and published by . This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is 1919, and Europe has been devastated by the First World War. Emil Molt, the managing director of Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company in Germany, and his wife Berta wanted to start a school to educate the children of their employees, and turned to their friend Rudolf Steiner for guidance. That would be the start of revolutionary approach to education, now known worldwide as Waldorf education.Sophia Christine Murphy, Emil Molt's grand-daughter, draws on her grandfather's diaries to trace the couple's struggles, betrayals, successes and breakthroughs in the founding and nurturing of the first Waldorf school. Murphy tells the story with grace, ease and objectivity, bringing this remarkable chapter of educational history to life.

Download or read book Fun Home written by Alison Bechdel and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.

Download or read book Grave Misfortune The USS Indianapolis Tragedy written by Richard A. Hulver and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dedicated to the Sailors and Marines who lost their lives on the final voyage of USS Indianapolis and to those who survived the torment at sea following its sinking. plus the crews that risked their lives in rescue ships. The USS Indianapolis (CA-35) was a decorated World War II warship that is primarily remembered for her worst 15 minutes. . This ship earned ten (10) battle stars for her service in World War II and was credited for shooting down nine (9) enemy planes. However, this fame was overshadowed by the first 15 minutes July 30, 1945, when she was struck by two (2) torpedoes from Japanese submarine I-58 and sent to the bottom of the Philippine Sea. The sinking of Indianapolis and the loss of 880 crew out of 1,196 --most deaths occurring in the 4-5 day wait for a rescue delayed --is a tragedy in U.S. naval history. This historical reference showcases primary source documents to tell the story of Indianapolis, the history of this tragedy from the U.S. Navy perspective. It recounts the sinking, rescue efforts, follow-up investigations, aftermath and continuing communications efforts. Included are deck logs to better understand the ship location when she sunk and testimony of survivors and participants. For additional historical publications produced by the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, please check out these resources here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/naval-history-heritage-command Year 2016 marked the 71st anniversary of the sinking and another spike in public attention on the loss -- including a big screen adaptation of the story, talk of future films, documentaries, and planned expeditions to locate the wreckage of the warship.

Download or read book Black Girl White Girl written by Joyce Carol Oates and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen years ago, in 1975, Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent, terrible death. Minette Swift had been a fiercely individualistic scholarship student, an assertive—even prickly—personality, and one of the few black girls at an exclusive women's liberal arts college near Philadelphia. By contrast, Genna was a quiet, self-effacing teenager from a privileged upper-class home, self-consciously struggling to make amends for her own elite upbringing. When, partway through their freshman year, Minette suddenly fell victim to an increasing torrent of racist harassment and vicious slurs—from within the apparent safety of their tolerant, "enlightened" campus—Genna felt it her duty to protect her roommate at all costs. Now, as Genna reconstructs the months, weeks, and hours leading up to Minette's tragic death, she is also forced to confront her own identity within the social framework of that time. Her father was a prominent civil defense lawyer whose radical politics—including defending anti-war terrorists wanted by the FBI—would deeply affect his daughter's outlook on life, and later challenge her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world. Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of "black" and "white," of race and civil rights in post-Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time.