I don't think I have ever cried so much reading a book. It was really toward the ending that I just felt sad, enraged, and all the feelings.

A true modern classic. This would be an excellent book to use to teach high school or college students about race in America and particularly. It's set in the 1940s, and I'm surprised I never came across it until moving to the South. It's extremely well put together. It's moving. It's intimate. I am glad that I read it, and I'm not sure what else to say about it except that I think more people should read this book.

I still think about this book, even after reading it months ago. It’s a very simple story about two African-American men in 1940s Louisiana; one is a teacher and the other is a uneducated man waiting to be executed for a murder he witnessed, but didn’t commit. Both of them have given up hope for their lives, and for humanity in general. They live by the rules of the white majority, and both face a bleak future that’s beyond their ability to change. They are forced to spend time together, and eventually, they end up teaching each other how noble they are, and how precious life is. I won't lie; it's a very sad book, so you should read it with a box of Kleenex nearby. But it's not tragic. There's a great message that you'll carry away from it.
I still believe that To Kill a Mockingbird is the best American novel, but A Lesson Before Dying now ranks in my top three. So read it, and not just because it’s a profound examination of racial, gender, and religious issues. Read it as an appreciation of what the human soul can achieve, even in the smallest spaces. If you get to the line, “Tell Nannan I walked” and you don’t get choked up, you should check your pulse.

When I first started reading this book, I could not put it down. This was despite the disdain that I had for the characters, almost all of the them. All of the white characters, except one, are completely deplorable. The black characters do not fare much better, in my opinion. The main character's aunt is especially annoying. She is domineering and pouty. The other old lady is aggravatingly weak, although that is arguably too strong of a word for her since the entire plot the story is built upon revolves around the scheme she and the aunt concoct.

The characters that are not unsettling include the children, which pass through the story as nothing more than "extras," and Grant, the main character/narrator, and his girlfriend. It is the revolution that occurs within Grant that really makes the story worthwhile, as well as what occurs within Jefferson, the individual on death row with whom Grant interacts.

What I really enjoyed about this book are the themes that occur within it. This is why I could not put it down. On the surface, it is, perhaps, a book about racism and being held down. Ultimately, though, the book reveals that we are the ones holding ourselves down, regardless of race. In that way, it transcends race.

Important questions and choices we make about running away/abandoning our homelands because they represent something we do not like or persevering our locale to try and make a difference, to try and help others, is a theme upon which the book turns, particularly given the setting: An operating plantation in the 1950s. A theme that closely relates to this is the one of trading places; there are many occasions throughout the book where certain characters "trade places" with others, metaphorically speaking, from the "roles" they play within their daily lives to how they interact with one another in their small, confined world.

This is a book that I can see making its way into America's literary canon. "A Lesson Before Dying," as the author says about one of James Joyce's short stories, Ivy Day in the Meeting Room, is, "regardless of race, regardless of class, [a] universal [story]." It is all about race yet transcends the topic in a way few writers have been able to do.

I did not want the month of February to go by without reading at least one book by a black author. Wow, am I grateful that my library had this title on display. A book I've meant to read for a long time and now I know why. What an emotional wallop.

From the opening pages where a public defender "defends" a black man by comparing him to no more than a hog, to the powerful closing pages of Jefferson's jailhouse diary, I was caught in 1940's Louisiana and the injustice of a racist society.

What is to stand like a man? This ageless, timeless question dominates the novel. It's a question without an easy answer and Gaines' characters stumble through humbly, defiantly, confusedly, longingly. What drives the pace and momentum is the execution date. Will Grant Wiggens be able to convince Jefferson (or himself) that he is a man? That it even matters?

I loved everything about the questions asked, the questions answered, the writing and setting and characters. It all made me incredibly sad, but even that was satisfying. Gaines never wastes a word in telling this story and all I want is more.

Read Alikes:
To Kill a Mockingbird (I don't make this comparison lightly, A Lesson Before Dying is every bit as powerful a novel.)
Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate

A look back at Jim Crow-era Louisiana. Rosa Parks has yet take her rightful seat during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and it is still another twenty years until the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. But Jackie Robinson has recently become first baseman of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In a Louisiana parish, Jefferson, a young black man, has been convicted by 12 white men on trumped up charges of robbery and murder. Jefferson’s attorney in his closing argument refers to Jefferson as a pig; in the sense that he’s just too dumb to plan much less carry out such a heinous crime. This defense tactic not only does not work, it becomes a bee in the godmother’s bonnet. Miss Emma wants the local school teacher, Grant Wiggins, to instruct the doomed young man—perhaps enlighten him—so that he might go to the electric chair with some dignity. She had worked for a prominent white family in the parish for ages, The Pichots, so she pleads with the head of the house that Grant the teacher be allowed to visit Jefferson in jail. The teacher himself wants nothing to do with the idea. The teacher thinks Jefferson as good as dead. Professor Wiggins is an angry young man; he’s autocratic with his students, furious with “the system” in the South—who wouldn’t be?—and eager to leave it behind, no doubt for what he perceives as more exciting northern climes. His old schoolteacher, Mr. Ambrose, has given him a good model for his bitterness, and Wiggins, who now holds Ambrose’s old post, seems to be dutifully replicating it. Truly, the submission all people of color must show toward whites during Jim Crow strikes me as soul obliterating. I’m on Wiggins side in his desire to leave. But Vivian, his lover, wants him to stay. She feels going off to a strange city is selfish, that it’s an abandonment of their people, that the only way to break the cycle of poverty and racism is to stay and help. She’s right in this sense, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929 in Atlanta. By 1952, roughly the time of this novel, he has graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary and was soon to launch his ministry. Gaines’s prose is touched with Faulkner like so much southern writing. I doubt the nature of the lesson itself can be anticipated. The narrative underpinnings here depend on faith, specifically Christianity. This doesn’t bother me because I have an intellectual interest in world religions. I found the story very moving.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I especially liked the development of Grant. I like the fact that he questions the problems and situations around him. He's not content to stay where he is in life and within himself.

This is an exceptional book. My Gosh....I might consider reading it again myself. (I had just noticed a GR's friend is currently reading it).

What a powerful story. This goes to my classics shelf immediately. This is the kind of great book that makes you wonder how you could have passed it over for so long. Instant respect for Ernest Gaines.

Ernest J. Gaines' 'A Lesson Before Dying' is a tedious read that has a good story, but ultimately falls flat mainly because of shallow characters and flat writing.

However, if you are looking for a short, quick-read novel about African-Americans and whites during racial segregation in the style of 'To Kill a Mockingbird', this might be your cup of tea. But ultimately, there is nothing enlightening, heart-wrenching, or poignant about this novel. Many of the issues lay within the main character, Grant Wiggins, a bitter school teacher who complains about being in his 'stifling' Louisiana town, complains and berates family members and students, yet ultimately doesn't do anything about his situation regardless of what he says or does. I have never encountered a character more bitter, cold, or just plain selfish than Grant Wiggins. Nothing ever seems to please him, and everyone seems to be at the sword's end with Grant - from his aunt and her friends, to his pupils, and even sometimes his girlfriend.

While the book is supposed to be about Jefferson, a young black male sentenced to death, there are actually few moments when the reader encounters Jefferson - most of the time, it's just Grant, and what he doesn't like, and how his Aunt and her friend are looking at him, how he wants to leave but doesn't leave, how he acts 'smart' with the whites and they don't like it, so on and so forth. There is so much conflict and anger that rolls off the pages whenever Grant is narrating it becomes tiresome and boring. This is not a page turner, and it takes several chapters to get into the actual story. The characters, other than Grant, are not very memorable and lack depth and clarity - they seem to be simply the dumb marionettes while Grant is the smart and superior, albeit angry, craftsman.

Mr. Gaines' writing also does not help to make this book even somewhat-passable by any standards. It seems almost dull, bored, and disinterested - as if he wasn't really invested in the writing from the start. The beginning of the book gives you hope, but after that, it all falls downhill from there and picks up too late, only until the absolute end. Thus, the writing leaves an empty hole in the center of what should be a fiery sea of emotion and personal connection.

Basically, 'A Lesson Before Dying' is a diamond that was never completely polished. It never really made a personal connection with me, and was such a difficult and disappointing read for me, and even today, it still fails to touch the part of me that will leave you thoughtful for the rest of the day, and many to come.

We follow a man to his deaf and how the people around him are impacted both white people and black people so incredibly heartbreaking and beautifully written I cried for the last five chapters I think this was such an important book and I am so glad I came across it it's so powerful and takes an amazing look at how color sends a man to death

A tale of Jefferson, a poor black man in Louisiana in the late 40's, sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit, and the teacher, Grant Wiggins, who is asked to help him somehow to become more of a man before he dies. Grant has little faith in his value as a teacher to elementary kids facing an unjust and impoverished life or belief in any afterlife. But he comes to identify with Jefferson and his need to achieve a sense of his own self-dignity, and this task becomes part of his own quest. The prose is rich and elegant in its spareness and the story never settles into melodrama.