African American Literature

Title: African American Literature
Category: Literature / Novels
Details: Words: 910 | Pages: 3.9 (approximately 235 words/page)

African American Literature

Amy Goldich In his Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, James Weldon Johnson explores the meaning of "passing" in an American society. The reader never learns the name of the narrator in the novel, but you learn that it’s of little importance. The crisis throughout the novel centers on the narrator discovering his identity. At times the narrator regrets his failure to the black race, he says, “ I am an ordinary white man who has …showed first 75 words of 910 total…

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…showed last 75 words of 910 total…the race that hated him. Combining all of these causes lead to his result of “passing”, it becomes clear why the narrator chose this decision. However, I don’t agree with his choice, “passing” is destructive in that it prevented the narrator from finding his identity. He didn’t know if he belonged in the category of black or white, so he chose the easy way out and lived with guilt and embarrassment and sin.

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