The Project on the History of Black Writing mourns the passing of Ernest J. Gaines. Gaines died from cardiac arrest in his Louisiana home on Tuesday. He was 86. Gaines was born the eldest son of sharecroppers and raised on a plantation in Pointe Coupée Parish, Louisiana. The rural South would become a permanent fixture in his writing because it was not only home […]
[by Meredith Wiggins] 2014 is an exciting year for readers and scholars interested in the work of Ernest J. Gaines. It’s the 50th anniversary of the award-winning author’s first novel, Catherine Carmier, which set the stage for the Gaines’s later, better-known fiction, including 1971’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, 1983’s A Gathering of Old Men, and 1993’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated A Lesson Before Dying. Alongside […]