- Edith Garland Dupré Library
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- A Guide to the Ernest J. Gaines Center
- Ernest J. Gaines Bibliography
A Guide to the Ernest J. Gaines Center
Gaines on Writing
People have asked me quite often, "Who do you write for?" I say I don't write for any particular group. But if there's a gun put to my head and someone says, "OK, name somebody you write for," I'd say," I write for the black youth of the South." And if there are two groups, I'd say, "I write for the black and white youth of the South." Those are the people I would write for.
Number one, I would want the black youth to say, "Hey, I am somebody." And I'd want the white youth to say, "Hey, that is part of me out there, and I can only understand myself truly if I can understand my neighbor." That's the only way one can understand himself, if he can understand other things around him. We live - you know, Donne's "No man is an island" and "Don't ask for whom the bell tolls" - Every little piece of things around us makes us a little bit whole. We can go through the world being half people, and most of us do that most of our lives. But in order to understand more about ourselves and the world, we must understand what's around. So that's what I'd want: the white kids to understand what the black kid is, and the black kid to understand who he is, if I had to write for any group.
Contact
Associate Professor of Library Science
400 E. St. Mary Blvd.
Lafayette, LA 70503
Books By Ernest J. Gaines
This a list of titles by Ernest J. Gaines' that can be checked out of the Edith Garland Duprè Library. These books can be found outside of the Ernest J. Gaines Center (located on the 3rd floor of the Edith Garland Duprè Library) and in the General Collection, located on the 2nd floor of the Edith Garland Duprè Library. Translated versions and archival copies of Gaines's books are available for use in the Ernest J. Gaines Center.
Book Titles and Call Numbers
| Catherine Carmier. Atheneum, 1964. | PS3557 .A355 C36 1993 |
| Of Love and Dust. Dial Press, 1967. | PS3557 .A355 O4 |
| Bloodline. Dial Press, 1968. | PS3557 .A355 B5 |
| The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Dial Press, 1971. | PS3557 .A355 A9 |
| In My Father’s House. Knopf, 1978. | PS3557 .A355 I5 |
| A Long Day in November. Dial Press, 1971. | PZ7 .G1275 LO |
| A Gathering of Old Men. Knopf, 1983. | PS3557 .A355 G3 1983 |
| Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays. Knopf, 2005. | PS3557 .A355 M697 2005 |
| A Lesson Before Dying. Knopf, 1993. | PS3557 .A355 L47 1993 |
Gaines's Fiction on Film
- The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. CBS Television (1974)
- The Sky is Gray. American Short Story Series, PBS (1980)
- A Gathering of Old Men. CBS Television (1987)
- A Lesson Before Dying. HBO (1999)
Selected Criticism
Brown, Anne Gray. "Writing for Life: 'Jefferson's Diary' as Transformative Text in Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying." Southern Quarterly ,vol. 47, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 23-46.
Cash, Wiley. "'What Men Dream About Doing': A Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines." Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, vol. 60, no. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 289-304.
Clark, Keith. "Que(e)rying the Prison-House of Black Male Desire: Homosociality in Ernest Gaines's 'Three Men.'" African American Review, vol. 40, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 239-55.
Daley, Katherine and Carolyn M. Jones. "Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying: Freedom in Confined Spaces." From the Plantation to the Prison: African-American Confinement Literature, edited by Tara T. Green, Mercer UP, 2008, pp. 83-117.
Herbert-Leiter, Maria. "A Breed Between: Racial Meditation in the Fiction of Ernest Gaines." MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, vol. 31, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 95-117.
Lambert, Raphaël. "Race and the Tragic Mode in Ernest J. Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men." Southern Literary Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, Spring 2010, pp. 106-125.
Stupp, Jason. "Living Death: Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying and the Execution of Willie Francis." Demands of the Dead: Executions, Storytelling, and Activism in the United States, edited by Katy Ryan, University of Iowa P, 2012, pp. 45-58.
Thomières, Daniel. "Man's Way and Woman's Way in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman." Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures, vol. 64, no. 1-2, Winter-Spring 2011, pp. 219-234.
Wadia, Mickey. "Because the Wind is Pink: The Waiting Room as Epicenter of Physical and Spiritual Dysfunction in Ernest Gaines's 'The Sky Is Gray' and Flannery O'Connor's 'Revelation.'" Tennessee Philological Bulletin, vol. 47, 2010, pp. 46-61.
Young, Reggie Scott. "Theoretical Influences and Experimental Resemblances: Ernest J. Gaines and Recent Critical Approaches to the Study of African American Fiction." Contemporary African American Fiction: New Critical Essays, edited by Dana A. Williams, Ohio State UP, 2009, pp. 11-36.
