Louisiana

NOLADawn said, "Ok, some more Southern Lit here... Another LA book- A Lesson Before Dying- by Ernest J. Gaines"

A Lesson Before Dying is a novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country and teaches a black youth, who is on death row for a crime he didn't commit. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting -- and defying -- the expected. This book was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Library Journal said in its review:

What do you tell an innocent youth who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and now faces death in the electric chair? What do you say to restore his self-esteem when his lawyer has publicly described him as a dumb animal? What do you tell a youth humiliated by a lifetime of racism so that he can face death with dignity? The task belongs to Grant Wiggins, the teacher of the Negro plantation school who narrates the story. Grant grew up on the Louisiana plantation but broke away to go to the university. He returns to help his people but struggles over "whether I should act like the teacher that I was, or like the nigger that I was supposed to be." The powerful message Grant tells the youth transforms him from a "hog" to a hero, and the reader is not likely to forget it, either.

The novel by Gaines that I (Bonnie) cannot forget is A Gathering of Old Men. Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A Gathering of Old Men is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man. A group of men stand up for this black man who represents all blacks who have suffered the indignities and pain inflicted on them over the years.