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Title details for The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson - Available

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

by James Weldon Johnson
Alan Bomar Jones
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. In the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans.


Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to "pass" for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century—from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. This is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America, a hymn to the anguish of forging an identity in a nation obsessed with color.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 20, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452620619
      • File size: 145827 KB
      • Duration: 05:03:48

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1100
    • Text Difficulty: 7-9

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This 1912 novel is a fictional autobiography of an unnamed biracial man, with lessons and observations that are still fresh today. Alan Bomar Jones performs in a smooth voice. He adopts cultured, barely inflected tones for the narrative and the protagonist's dialogue, while using strong Southern and New York accents for the dialogue of other African-Americans. Jones's uninflected Spanish, French, and German phrases contrast sharply with Johnson's descriptions of the protagonist's near-native fluency. Full of sophisticated vocabulary, thoughtful ruminations, and detailed observations, the autobiography is replete with long discussions of race and discrimination as the hero travels throughout the South, New York, Boston, and Europe. Author James Weldon Johnson was a Harlem Renaissance writer as well as an educator, musician, and lawyer. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      David Sadzin's performance of this classic 1912 novel is evocative, even poetic. He creates a serious and persuasive portrayal of its tortured protagonist. Telling the unnamed man's story in the first person, he re-creates the character's intimate and intelligent tone and catches the cadence of his self-conscious yet assured voice. The listener follows the trajectory of the man, whose journey starts in boyhood, when he lives with his Black mother, rarely seeing his white father. A talented musician, he goes to New York City, where he pursues the life of a white man, marrying a white woman and having fair-skinned children. Race, race relations, and the complex story of a "negro" man passing for white provide the sociological underpinnings of this short but compelling audiobook. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1100
  • Text Difficulty:7-9

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