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Ernest J. Gaines
Ernest James Gaines (January 15, 1933 – November 5, 2019) was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. Four of his works were made into television movies.
Born in Louisiana, Gaines spent his early life living on the Riverlake Plantation before moving to California and later serving in the United States Army. Over the course of his life, Gaines worked a variety of temporary jobs to support his life as a writer. His works include themes such as race, family, community, and humanity.
His 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Gaines was a MacArthur Foundation fellow, was awarded the National Humanities Medal, and was inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier.
Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on the Riverlake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. That became the setting and premise for many of his later works. The oldest of 12 children, he was raised by his disabled great aunt, Miss Augusteen Jefferson, whose legs were paralyzed. According to A Gathering of Gaines by Anne K. Simpson, she chose to crawl using her upper body rather than use a welfare-donated wheelchair. Her considerable influence on Gaines and his writing is a recurring topic in interviews with him and---in an interview from the Southwestern Review in 1978---Gaines credits her as having "'the greatest impact on [his] life, not only as a writer but as a man." Although born generations after the end of slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, living in the old slave quarters on the plantation.
Gaines' first years of school took place in the plantation church. When the children were not picking cotton in the fields, a visiting teacher came for five to six months of the year to provide basic education. Gaines then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads, Louisiana. Schooling for African-American children did not continue beyond the eighth grade during this time in Pointe Coupee Parish.
When he was 15 years old, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California, to join his mother and stepfather, who had left Louisiana during World War II. He wrote his first novel at 16 while he was babysitting his youngest brother Michael. According to one account, he wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string, and sent it to a New York publisher, who rejected it. After the parcel containing his manuscript was returned to him---rejection slip enclosed---Gaines incinerated that first copy, page by page, but later rewrote the novel, which became his first published book, Catherine Carmier.
In 1951, after graduating from high school and as the first male in his family to do so, Gaines enrolled at Vallejo Junior College. After studying there for two years, Gaines received an Associate of Arts in Journalism. He was then drafted by the United States Army, completed basic training, and served a two-year stint in Guam before being discharged in 1955. While stationed in Guam, Gaines entered a writing competition organized by the U.S. Far East Command in Japan and was awarded two monetary prizes for the short stories he submitted. Then, in the Fall of 1955, Gaines used a $110-a-month military stipend provided to him through the G.I. Bill to enroll at San Francisco State University (SFSU). There is contradictory information as to what Gaines studied while there. According to Simpson, he studied English and social studies. However, in Ernest J. Gaines: A Critical Companion, Karen Carmean wrote that Gaines studied language arts as his major with a minor in English literature.
In 1956, Gaines published his first short story, "The Turtles", in a college magazine at SFSU.
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Ernest J. Gaines
Ernest James Gaines (January 15, 1933 – November 5, 2019) was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. Four of his works were made into television movies.
Born in Louisiana, Gaines spent his early life living on the Riverlake Plantation before moving to California and later serving in the United States Army. Over the course of his life, Gaines worked a variety of temporary jobs to support his life as a writer. His works include themes such as race, family, community, and humanity.
His 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Gaines was a MacArthur Foundation fellow, was awarded the National Humanities Medal, and was inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier.
Gaines was among the fifth generation of his sharecropper family to be born on the Riverlake Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. That became the setting and premise for many of his later works. The oldest of 12 children, he was raised by his disabled great aunt, Miss Augusteen Jefferson, whose legs were paralyzed. According to A Gathering of Gaines by Anne K. Simpson, she chose to crawl using her upper body rather than use a welfare-donated wheelchair. Her considerable influence on Gaines and his writing is a recurring topic in interviews with him and---in an interview from the Southwestern Review in 1978---Gaines credits her as having "'the greatest impact on [his] life, not only as a writer but as a man." Although born generations after the end of slavery, Gaines grew up impoverished, living in the old slave quarters on the plantation.
Gaines' first years of school took place in the plantation church. When the children were not picking cotton in the fields, a visiting teacher came for five to six months of the year to provide basic education. Gaines then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads, Louisiana. Schooling for African-American children did not continue beyond the eighth grade during this time in Pointe Coupee Parish.
When he was 15 years old, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California, to join his mother and stepfather, who had left Louisiana during World War II. He wrote his first novel at 16 while he was babysitting his youngest brother Michael. According to one account, he wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with string, and sent it to a New York publisher, who rejected it. After the parcel containing his manuscript was returned to him---rejection slip enclosed---Gaines incinerated that first copy, page by page, but later rewrote the novel, which became his first published book, Catherine Carmier.
In 1951, after graduating from high school and as the first male in his family to do so, Gaines enrolled at Vallejo Junior College. After studying there for two years, Gaines received an Associate of Arts in Journalism. He was then drafted by the United States Army, completed basic training, and served a two-year stint in Guam before being discharged in 1955. While stationed in Guam, Gaines entered a writing competition organized by the U.S. Far East Command in Japan and was awarded two monetary prizes for the short stories he submitted. Then, in the Fall of 1955, Gaines used a $110-a-month military stipend provided to him through the G.I. Bill to enroll at San Francisco State University (SFSU). There is contradictory information as to what Gaines studied while there. According to Simpson, he studied English and social studies. However, in Ernest J. Gaines: A Critical Companion, Karen Carmean wrote that Gaines studied language arts as his major with a minor in English literature.
In 1956, Gaines published his first short story, "The Turtles", in a college magazine at SFSU.
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