This was one of the best books I have ever read.
The book takes place in Louisianna. A black man who was a slave on the cotton farms was wrongly accused of murder and was sentenced to death by the electric chair. The book is about the last few weeks the man has on earth. A black teacher was sent to him each week to convinced him that he was worth something and that he was a man. He convinced him to believe in God and ask for forgivness of his sins. He did so to please his aunt. He walked to the electric chair like a man.
I recommend this book to all readers. It also causes one to do some introspection on his or her own life and beliefs.
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond

Simple to the point of purposeless. There isn't a single notion about race relations or segregation to be found in this book that any sane, thinking person hasn't come to on his or her own. The only thing worse than the thoughtlessness are the stunningly bad prose.

"How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?"

"Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. Justice?"

"Don't tell me to believe. Don't tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don't tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him--and I will not believe.

"Yet they must believe. They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave."

This book was very moving. Through Jefferson, a black man in the 1940s who is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, the author explores the themes of racial discrimination and hierarchy, due process, capital punishment, and faith in God and the afterlife. There were many points in the novel that I thought Gaines could have used better imagery, rather than flatly stating events and emotions. I admit, though, that the minimalism did help the novel to stay focused on the main event--Jefferson's pending execution. It might be a short book and a quick read, but it's anything but light!

What an extraordinarily moving book. I read it in one day, and sobbed for the last 30 pages. Grant Wiggins learns much from Jefferson, when he is supposed to be teaching him. They both learn something about what it means to "be a man."

I rank this book among the best I have ever read. It will become a classic of American literature. In my opinion, this is the current generation's n  To Kill a Mockingbirdn - a modern-day classic. Our book club could not stop talking about it.

I first read it in March 1998; in May 2002 I recommended it to another book group with similar results.
And I read it again in Sept 2007 just because I love the work so much.

Highly recommend this work.

This story follows Grant Wiggins, a teacher who has been asked to regularly visit a former student, Jefferson, a very young Black man who has been falsely accused of murdering a white man and has now been sentenced to the electric chair. Persistently asked by Jefferson's Nannan Emma and his own Taunt Lou to help Jefferson face this unjust fate with strength, Wiggins reluctantly agrees with very little expectation. What follows is a journey that cannot be described, only endured.

Never in my life have a cried harder throughout the last 30 pages of a book.

I have had the honor of interning at the Ernest J. Gaines Center in the heart of my hometown, and although I had read this over a decade ago, the impact was somehow stronger the second time around. Calling Gaines's work 'prolific' is not enough. It is a massive understatement. He was a writer whose talent transcends the page, fills my chest with the crushing weight of lead that later cascades as liquid out of my eyes, my soul.

'A Lesson Before Dying' will stay with me forever. 5⭐️

This may be the most heart breaking book it has ever been my sad pleasure to read. A young man is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and due to his poor decision making on this one ill fated occasion, ends up wrongfully accused of murder and condemned to death row. Set during a time when race relations were strained and tilted heavily in favor of privileged whites at the expense of struggling blacks who were looked down upon (in other words, a time much worse and yet insufficiently different from today), the best that his lawyer can think up as a defense is to compare the defendant to a dumb hog. When this fails to prevent Jefferson from being convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, his godmother calls upon local grade school teacher Grant Wiggins. What she asks of Grant is both simple and seemingly impossible. Jefferson cannot escape an unfair verdict in an unjust world. But instead of pitifully accepting designation as a brute animal, maybe he can find a measure of dignity in his final days, allowing him to take his final steps with head held high like a man. Grant is a cynic and less than a true believer in what we're taught about God and an awaiting Heaven. It takes the bullying of his aunt to make him accept the ultimate teaching assignment. He does his best. Jefferson does his best. Readers may do their best in the end not to cry. Many will surely fail.

Reading Road Trip: 2020

Current location: Louisiana

Man walk on two foots; hogs on four hoofs.

The entire front of my shirt is soaked right now, from tears. I am wrecked. Wrecked.

I do not understand several things, at this moment, as I have just finished this book:
(1) How did I not know who Ernest J. Gaines was, before I researched a “Louisiana” read for my road trip last year?
(2) Why isn't this book an American classic, as well known as To Kill A Mockingbird?
(3) Are all of his books this good?



Damn it. I feel in over my head right now. Can I do justice to this story, in my response?

First off, I was completely hesitant to begin this. This novel has a boring cover, an uninspired title, and I had never heard of this author before. The story starts off with some awkward dialogue between the two lovers, Grant and Vivian, and I was rolling my eyes, early on, preparing myself for disaster.

It was the total opposite. The total opposite! Within just a short chapter or two from the bad dialogue, Mr. Gaines seemed to hit his stride, describing his surroundings in such detail, I felt I was there:

After leaving the quarter, I drove down a graveled road for about two miles, then along a paved road beside the St. Charles River for another ten miles. There were houses and big live oak and pecan trees on either side of the road, but not as many on the riverbank side. There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites. There were one or two nightclubs for colored, but there were not very good.

This story doesn't take place in New Orleans, but in a small, fictional town known as Bayonne, Louisiana. It's the late 1940s, but, given the surroundings and the social mores, it could easily be the 1840s. The residents of this community still call their home “the plantation,” and the protagonist, Grant Wiggins, “[knows] what it means to be a slave.”

Grant is an educated man, known on the plantation as “The Professor,” but he missed an opportunity to move with his parents to California and instead fell in love with a local woman in the small town, after accepting a teaching position.

When a “cousin” named Jefferson is sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit, Grant's aunt and the young man's godmother become obsessed with Grant's role in “rehabilitating” Jefferson to “walk as a man” to his execution and accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior before dying.

This is a big task to ask of Grant, who is not only an agnostic, but a jaded man who has long given up on his civic duties.

What follows is one of the most touching and upsetting stories I've ever read, and Jefferson's godmother, Miss Emma, broke whatever was left of my heart. ("Oh, Lord Jesus, stand by, stand by.")

I realized, reading this story, that we can hold up 8 billion signs that read, “Black Lives Matter,” but if we don't treat people with respect and common decency when we interact with each other, it'll all amount to a pile of bullshit in the end.

There is nothing didactic here; Mr. Gaines is not a preacher, and his protagonist, Grant Wiggins, isn't much of a classroom teacher.

What is conveyed here is subtle. . . a subtle, cruel perversity in the disrespect, invalidation and sterilization of an entire people.

What is the solution? Well, Mr. Gaines doesn't know for sure, but his story makes it clear what happens when we treat people as humans and what happens when we treat them as hogs.

A stunningly beautiful gut punch of a novel, wow.

Why do we as a nation read and teach To Kill a Mockingbird and not A Lesson Before Dying? In my opinion this is a much truer, deeper look at the moral cost that we continue to pay for our history of slavery.

It’s the 1940s, but Grant Wiggins and Jefferson still live in The Quarter, work and teach on a plantation, and are subject to the whims and cruelty of criminal justice as controlled by the landowners.

Grant Wiggins’ voice and thoughts will stay with me for a long time to come.

I found this novel to be incredibly moving. I cried throughout the last two chapters. Though simply written the book contained so many truths and touched on intensely complex issues. Although It has been on my book shelf for many years unread, I realize with painfully mixed feelings I have been enlightened by finally reading this extraordinary novel.

So many people have said "you need to read this book". They are right. I wept and at the sa.e time my spirit soared.

A very difficult book to rate. I didn't enjoy reading it; I didn't feel particularly connected to or drawn in by the characters, I found the writing somewhat flat. And yet, like many other reviewers, I found myself in tears at the last chapter. And now I find myself wanting to read more of Gaines' work.

Don't tell me to believe. Don't tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don't tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him - and I will not believe.

Wow....This book left me speechless and emotionally overwhelmed.