A Lesson Before Dying (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Ernest J. Gaines, EJ for short, was born in the slave area of a Louisiana plantation on January 15, 1933. His father, Manuel, and mother, Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines, worked as plantation laborers. Gaines's Aunt Augusteen cared for Gaines and his siblings as they grew up in "the Quarters." Gaines's earliest memories reflect times spent on his aunt's front porch listening to her friends' stories. After Gaines learned to read and write, he enjoyed writing letters for his aunt and her elderly friends. Through listening and writing, Gaines grew to understand himself and his people.

Gaines moved to San Francisco, California, with his mother and stepfather when he was fifteen years old. San Francisco offered Gaines a world of new experiences far removed from his aunt's front porch. Most importantly, he discovered libraries in San Francisco and quickly became an avid reader. Homesick for family, friends, and the Southern plantation lifestyle he had known, Gaines read any fiction he could find that was set in his homeland. He discovered that writers often gave the wrong impression of Southern blacks and the lives they led. These writers were white and had no personal experience with the kind of life Gaines knew existed for Southern blacks. He decided then to write those missing stories. He read other authors whose works he admired: Faulkner, Hemingway, Flaubert, and de Maupassant. The Russian writers, though, inspired him the most. Their stories about Russian peasants offered him a model for writing about the people he knew best.

In the meantime, Gaines graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from San Francisco State College in 1957 and completed graduate work at Stanford University in 1959. In 1962, a young black man named James Meredith tried to enter the University of Mississippi Law School, prompting civil rights demonstrations and violence. Gaines admired Meredith for his determination and courage. As a result, Gaines vowed to dedicate himself to writing about the Southern black experience. After returning to Louisiana, Gaines completed his first novel, Catherine Carmier. This 1964 success marked the beginning of his writing career.

Drawing from the stories he heard at his aunt's knee, Gaines writes about the people, places, and daily events of the rural South. Critics have always admired his work. They praise his portrayal of realistic characters and his capable handling of emotional themes: racism, personal relationships, social pressures, social change, and others. Jerry H. Bryant summarizes his talent in a comment in the Iowa Review. He asserts that his fiction "contains the austere dignity and simplicity of ancient epic, a concern with man's most powerful emotions and the actions that arise from those emotions, and an artistic intuition that carefully keeps such passions and behavior under fictive control. Gaines may be one of our most naturally gifted storytellers."