Recent Reads

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

Read in 2000.  Reread, several times, most recently in 2020

In the late 1940’s, Grant Wiggins, a Black man and teacher from a small Cajun community in Louisiana, is called upon by his aunt, Tante Lou, and her friend Miss Emma, both in their 70’s, to befriend and serve as a role model for the imprisoned Jefferson, a young Black boy who is facing death.  Jefferson was an unwitting spectator to a liquor store robbery and shootout where three men were killed.  Jefferson, though innocent, is the only survivor and is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. “Death by electrocution. The governor would set the date.”

Grant has returned to the community along the St. Charles River that he had once escaped to attend a university, but is now back, teaching at the plantation school, an underfunded, overlooked facility in rural, poverty-stricken Louisiana. “This was my school. I was supposed to teach six months out of the year, but actually I taught only five and a half months, from late October to the middle of April, when the children were not needed in the field.”  Grant is struggling, feeling defeated, eager to leave this job and escape his community once again.

As Grant struggles with his decision whether to stay or escape to another state, the two women persuade him to visit Jefferson in his cell and hopefully, “impart learning and pride to Jefferson, before his death.”  What follows allows the reader to step into one of the most moving and tender of  relationships ever expressed on the pages of a novel.  Many of us remember Ernest Gaines for his gems, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” and “A Gathering of Old Men.”  For me, this is the pinnacle of his work.

In the end, before Jefferson’s death, Grant and he forge a bond, and to Grant’s surprise, Jefferson becomes the teacher.  Jefferson becomes the role model for Grant, and ultimately for us, the readers to understand the simple heroics of resisting and defying the unexpected.

A Lesson Before Dying is a graphically, honestly written tale of the harsh, unfair, belittling hellhole of the Jim Crow south, and the faces of racism that unfortunately, still persist today in many aspects of our society.  Do I sound exasperated?  Why, yes, aren’t we all. Shouldn’t we be?