James Weldon JohnsonBesprekingen

Young man -
Young man-
You’re never lonesome in Babylon.
You can always join a crowd in Babylon.
Young man -
Young man -
You can never be alone in Babylon,
Alone with your Jesus in Babylon.
You can never find a place, a lonesome place,
A lonesome place to go down on your knees,
And talk with your God, in Babylon.
You’re always in a crowd in Babylon.

- excerpt from The Prodigal Son

Independent reading level: 3rd grade
Awards: none

Unexpected opening, then got boring as writer passes as white.

Even after witnessing the horrors of slavery mentality - burning a man alive,
he continued to pretend to be white and married a white woman and had children.

His regrets are strange.

The author wrote the words to "Lift Every Voice and Sing,"
and, along with his brother, lived in New York and wrote many Broadway tunes
as he became a leader in the Harlem Renaissance.

This book is a work of art, illustrated with linocut prints by Elizabeth Catlett. The introduction gives biographical information on the artist, poet and composer, as well as a history of the song known as the African American National Anthem. The Johnsons were principal and music teacher and created the song for a program celebrating Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The original titles of the prints are listed. The score is included.

Hard to believe that this book isn't more widely read.

"Young man --
Young man --
Your arm's too short to box with God."
(21)

Very well-crafted, and a fascinating look at the process of living and identifying as a different race.

This book is filled with illustrations that depict the song Lift Every Voice and Sing. The author uses pictures that help the reader to understand the emotions that are felt as the reader turns each page to discover the image that is presented. This book can be used to teach poetry, and learners can be introduced to the Harlem Renaissance. Teachers of RLEA would love this simple book to help with alliteration, symbolism, and imagery.

The preface of this book is very important. If you want to really know about race in America, you should read this book. Despite the fact that it was written long ago, we still need to be aware of our racial history. American should be color or race blind if we are to survive. No race should receive the treatment described in this book.

FROM AMAZON: First published in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex–Colored Man is the story of an unnamed, light-skinned, biracial narrator born in a small Georgia town during the years following the Civil War. He knows nothing about race—until he and his Black mother move to Connecticut and an episode at his school forces her to explain things to him.

As the narrator grows up, he pursues a higher education and begins traveling to cities like New York and Paris. He develops desires and ambitions, but everything changes when he returns to the South and witnesses the lynching of a Black man. The horror of the scene persuades him to live as white, but this decision comes at a cost . . .

The Autobiography of an Ex–Colored Man covered issues and themes not usually seen in the literature of its day. It offered a critical examination of race in society—as well as a look into Black society most white readers were unfamiliar with at the time.

Parts of it were really compelling, and parts of it were not. Really a fictional embodiment of DuBois's arguments in the "Souls of the Black Folk" about double consciousness -- was therefore not surprised to see the narrator reference that work in the course of the novella. One thing not immediately clear from reading: how much of the narrator is actually Johnson himself, and how much do they differ? This is especially pertinent because the narrator puts forth a lot of sociological arguments about "colored" people and economic class, and one has to wonder how much those arguments are rooted in the narrator's ability to pass as white [despite being biracial] because of his very fair skin. How much of the narrator's blind spots are by design, and how much are also Johnson's blind spots?

This edition includes some of Johnson's essays, which in some ways help clarify that question, but not totally satisfactorily.

The novella is perhaps the first instance in African American literature of a first-person viewpoint, and was a huge influence on that other famous novel about passing - Nella Larsen's "Passing," and also on Ralph Ellison's all-time classic "Invisible Man."

Anyway, a good, quick read with some interesting viewpoints.

Primary; Poetry; This book tells the story of Creation through an African American story teller. This is shown in the illustrations as he tells the young children around him of Creation. It is a sweet story of God's Creation of the universe, planet, and all creation on it. This would be a great book for a read aloud or classroom library in a Christian school, but may be a controversial choice in a public one.

This book is about an old man telling a group of children about the creation of the world found in Genesis. While this book is not entirely accurate when stating about the creation, it is still pretty factual. I enjoyed reading this book and seeing the cool illustrations found within it. This would be great for primary readers.

For beginning readers. This book is the creation story- an African American grandpa is telling his grandchildren the story of creation. The illustrations are beautiful and detailed. The story is true to what is written in Genesis. Good for christians who are also a part of African culture.

Johnson was a poet, songwriter, novelist, essayist and diplomat. Ishmael Reed used bits of Johnson’s report on the 1915 U.S. invasion of Haiti to great effect in his collage-novel Mumbo Jumbo. Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900) was put to music by his brother and became the black national anthem. The 2004 Library of America edition of Johnson’s Writings includes The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), the memoir Along the Way (1933), editorials from The New York Age (1914-23), selections from the poetry collection God’s Trombones (1927), and excerpts from Black Manhattan (1930). Johnson was a forceful advocate for the recognition of black contributions to the culture of the United States, and represents a perspective on jazz from within the black arts community during the early part of the 20th century.

In one of the columns he wrote for The New York Age newspaper in 1915, Johnson reproduced a letter sent to The New York Globe by one Eugene De Bueris, which begins with a question: Why does society prefer the Negro musician? In his letter, De Bueris expresses consternation that New York hotels are beginning to favor Negro orchestras for their dance exhibitions.

How is it that the Negro so-called musician, who hasn’t the slightest conception of music, would be preferred over the Caucasian musician who has spent well nigh a fortune and engaged in numerous years of painstaking study?…It will not be long before the poor white musician will be obliged to blacken his face to make a livelihood or starve.

In his reply to the letter, Johnson writes that there are good and sufficient reasons why Negro musicians are preferred at social affairs. Modern music and modern dance are both Negro creations. Johnson acknowledges that white musicians can play as well as Negro musicians if the music is written down, but Negro musicians are able to put into the music something that cannot be put on paper—‘a certain abandon that enters the blood of the dancers.’ That, says Johnson, is the secret.

In his Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), Johnson affirms that Negro dance and music are the only artistic creations to spring from American soil and receive universal acclaim. Ragtime (‘the mother of jazz, not just its predecessor,’ according to Alain Locke) originated with Negro piano players in the ‘questionable’ resorts of St. Louis, Memphis and other Mississippi River towns before arriving in Chicago for its first popular hearing at the 1893 World’s Fair. The earliest ragtime songs—like the slave girl Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin—‘jes’ grew,’ writes Johnson. (Ishmael Reed adopted the phrase for the dancing plague in Mumbo Jumbo.) Johnson, with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, appropriated and rewrote ‘jes’ grew’ songs (‘many with unprintable words but irresistible melodies’) for the musical show stage in New York. Johnson credits W.C. Handy with injecting blues into ragtime, blending great melodic beauty with polyphonic structure. By way of affirmation, Johnson asks,

Does not ragtime — with its bizarre harmonies, intricate rhythms, and abrupt jumps from one key to another—express the blare and jangle and surge of our national spirit?

In his Preface to The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926), Johnson writes that Americans are just coming around to understanding that Negro folk-songs, sacred and secular, provide the basis for the distinct musical idiom by which America expresses itself. He says that jazz has reached a point of development where it is commanding the attention of scholarly musicians, who understand that the music is based upon rhythms and polyphonic structure used by Negro bands at the turn of the 20th c. The distinctive tone-color of the jazz orchestra (with ‘its peculiar power of excitation to motor response’) results from the combination of instruments—horn, banjo, drum—favored by Negro bands because they did not require long and arduous and expensive training under a master, but could be readily self-taught by anyone with a musical ear. From the natural creativity and adaptability of Negroes, then, jazz ‘jes’ grew.’

In “Race Prejudice and the Negro Artist” (Harper’s, 1928), Johnson suggested what he called ‘the art approach’ to the race problem—a demonstration of the intellectual and artistic achievements of Negroes that would place the Negro in an entirely new light before the American people. Negro poetry, theatre, novels, painting and sculpture received new attention in the early part of the 20th century, and though he disliked the term, Johnson was a powerful voice in publicizing the ‘renaissance’ in Negro arts. (He thought no ‘rebirth’ was necessary since black creativity had been long ongoing.) Johnson pointed out that the Negro’s folk-art creations (dance, folklore, sacred and secular music) had already become ‘part of our common cultural fund,’ even if Negroes did not receive proper recognition for their contributions. Black secular music especially—ragtime, blues, jazz—had been taken over and assimilated and was no longer racial, but national. Song and dance have for a long while been both a sword and shield for the Negro, wrote Johnson, but the Negro’s folk-art contributions to American culture over the course of almost 300 years were finally being acknowledged. Since WWI, the efforts of the race had been magnified by individual Negro artists, who bring something fresh and vital to American art from the store of their own racial genius: ‘warmth, color, movement, rhythm and abandon.’ For Johnson, the race problem had become more a question of national mental attitudes toward the Negro than a question of his actual condition, and nothing could do more to change that mental attitude and raise the Negro’s status than a demonstration of intellectual parity through the production of literature and art.

The stereotype that the Negro is nothing more than a beggar at the gate of the nation, waiting to be thrown the crumbs of civilization, is being smashed by the Negro’s artistic efforts; he is making it realized that he is the possessor of a wealth of natural endowments and that he has long been a generous giver to America. He is impressing upon the national mind the conviction that he is an active and important force in American life, a creator as well as a creature.

I will say that James Weldon Johnson really accomplished what he hoped for in this novel. I really felt like I was reading an actual autobiography. A very interesting story. The lack of contractions made the language feel awkward at times. A good reader, but the writing a bit stilted. I think that made it feel more like the real story of a man's life, a man who wasn't a writer. Bill Andrew Quinn has a wonderful melodious voice, a pleasure to listen to.

The slimness of this novel belies the breadth and depth of its exploration of the racial and social divide in post-Reconstruction America.

We are whisked through the protagonist's relatively fortunate life, where his "Italian" complexion allows him access to white privilege while his upbringing allows him to also maintain an access to Black culture and community. Through this back-and-forth across the two cultures, he presents his experiences life as a Black-but-passing-for-white man in and outside of America.

The title forever hangs at the back of the reader's mind through the protagonist's various travels. At what point will he seek the "easy" way out? There are some essay-ish moments which the novel is clearly built around on to build up to the inevitable titular moment. But instead of being clunky or out-of-place I found them remarkable in how the author does not shy away from presenting opposing arguments as well as exposing the hypocrisy of both sides. Overall it feels like the academic brother of the more psychological and emotionally-charged Passing by Nella Larsen.

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This is a very interesting work of seven black sermons done in verse.

Wonderful. Ðe auþor was not really a Christian, so he only set in verse sermons he remembered from his youþ from folk preachers; ðe result does contain a few heresies, such as God feeling lonely and creating by acts (not speech), but yet is deeply moving.

To read aloud.

I was searching for a book to fulfill a portion of my readers challenge and stumbled upon this amazing compilation. There are over 30 poets and 177 beautifully detailed works in this collection. "The Haunted Oak" is such a fitting title and keenly distressing. "Calling the Doctor" reminds me of all the things Grandma use to mention when she would talk about curing ills. And "Miss Melerlee"- "Dat’s not yo’ name, but it ought to be!" is just so fun to recite. Throughout this book, the cadence is beautiful on the tongue and the words astute. I give this 5 stars. I was blessed to find this free on Amazon for Kindle.

These three titles - Up From Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk, and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (note that the last is a fictional novel, not an autobiography), are all must reads, not just for the African-American community, but for all Americans, and I would even argue for anyone seriously interested in English literature. They offer a profound look into American life and the status of race relations in the post-Civil War era, and much of what they talk about is quite relevant to modern society.

This book tells the story of how god created the world and everything in it. A group of young children listen as an elderly African American man tells the story from his perspective. Although there is no verbal indication throughout the story that the man is speaking, the illustrations show the reader that the man is telling the story through his storytelling movements. Though the story is in the words, the illustrations do most of the storytelling.

This isn’t the usual historical biography from a black man. He’s able to pass as black or white and has a privileged upbringing. He has a unique perspective of just being a man during the times of segregation.

This isn’t the usual historical biography from a black man. He’s able to pass as black or white and has a privileged upbringing. He has a unique perspective of just being a man during the times of segregation.

I was disappointed to learn that this was not in fact an autobiography, but rather one of those dubiously “inspired by” tales that collects the most interesting bits from different people’s lives and passes it off as the trials and tribulations of a single soul (I’m looking at you Precious/Push: A Novel]).½