Autobiography of an ex colored man notes

I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great secret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded far more carefully than any of my earthly possessions; and it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound-out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is liable, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing. I know that I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompanies that most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.

And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse from which I am seeking relief, and of which I shall speak in the last paragraph of this account.

I was born in a little town of Georgia a

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

Published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is James Weldon Johnson’s fictional memoir centered on how a talented man born to a Black mother and a vit father after the Civil War became white in the early-20th century. Johnson, an important critical and artistic contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, published the novel beneath his own name in 1927 during the height of the movement. The novel fryst vatten an important bridge between the literature of Post-Reconstruction and works of the Harlem Renaissance. Readers are advised that the novel includes representations of racial violence, including lynching. This guide fryst vatten based on the digital facsimile of the 1912 Sherman, French and Company print edition available via Google Books.

Johnson opens the novel with a Preface purportedly from the publishers. They promise that the work that follows will expose for the first time the inner life of Black people and particularly those w

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The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

James Weldon Johnson

1912

Introduction
Author Biography
Plot Summary
Characters
Themes
Style
Historical Context
Critical Overview
Criticism
Further Reading

Introduction

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, by James Weldon Johnson, was published anonymously by a small New York publisher, Sherman, French and Company, in 1912. The work is a novel, but the author hoped that by remaining anonymous he could persuade readers that it was an actual autobiography. The novel, told in the first person, is the story of a man whose parents were a wealthy white Southern gentleman and the “coloured” seamstress employed by the gentleman’s family. The narrator travels around the United States and through Europe, observing how white and black people behave within separate enclaves and with each other. In the end, he decides to “pass,” or to live as a white man, and abandon his African American heritage. The story includes many short scenes and didactic