![\"img_8975-copy\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.heuermontage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/IMG_8975-copy.jpg?resize=890%2C668&ssl=1\")
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Ernest Gaines’ 1993 novel,\u00a0A Lesson Before Dying<\/i>, won the\u00a0National Book Critics Circle Award\u00a0for fiction. The novel provides\u00a0a unique outlook on the status of African Americans in the South, after World War II and before the Civil Rights Movement. We see a Jim Crow South through the eyes of a formally educated African American teacher who often feels helpless and alienated from his own country.<\/p>\n
![\"dsc_0549-copy\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.heuermontage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/DSC_0549-copy.jpg?resize=890%2C559&ssl=1\")
Wikipedia tells me: “Gaines has been a\u00a0MacArthur Foundationfellow, awarded the\u00a0National Humanities Medal, and inducted into the French\u00a0Ordre des Arts et des Lettres<\/i>\u00a0(Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier.<\/p>\n
He\u00a0was among the fifth generation of his\u00a0sharecropper\u00a0family to be born on a\u00a0plantation\u00a0in\u00a0Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. This became the setting and premise for many of his later works. He was the eldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was crippled and had to crawl to get around the house. Although born generations after the end of\u00a0slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, living in old slave quarters on a plantation.”<\/p>\n
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And here is the quote, fitting for these post election days, don’t you think?<\/p>\n
Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ernest Gaines’ 1993 novel,\u00a0A Lesson Before Dying, won the\u00a0National Book Critics Circle Award\u00a0for fiction. The novel provides\u00a0a unique outlook on the status of African Americans in the South, after World War II and before the Civil Rights Movement. We see a Jim Crow South through the eyes of a formally educated African American teacher who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"img_8974-copy\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.heuermontage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/IMG_8974-copy.jpg?resize=890%2C668&ssl=1\")
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