A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines' eighth novel, published in 1993. Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933, during the height of the Great Depression. His father was a sharecropper on the River Lake Plantation in Oscar, Louisiana which meant that Gaines was expected to work in the fields growing up. During this time, he had been both witness to and victim of racism. He attended school for his first six years in the plantation church, where he ... more

A Lesson Before Dying is Ernest J. Gaines' eighth novel, published in 1993. Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933, during the height of the Great Depression. His father was a sharecropper on the River Lake Plantation in Oscar, Louisiana which meant that Gaines was expected to work in the fields growing up. During this time, he had been both witness to and victim of racism. He attended school for his first six years in the plantation church, where he went to classes for five to six months out of the year depending on the harvest schedule. After this, Gaines then spent three more years at the St. Augustine School, which was for African Americans only. At the age of fifteen he moved to Vallejo, California to join his mother and stepfather who had left Louisiana during World War II. There are numerous similarities between Ernest Gaines’ life and his novel. This book is set on a Louisiana plantation similar to the one where Gaines grew up. Gaines was raised by his Aunt Augusteen; Gaines'... less