Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble Classics Series), The

James Weldon Johnson

A coming-of-age story about a man whose light skin enables him to “pass” for white, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man describes a remarkable journey through the strata of black and white society at the turn of the twentieth century. From a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from hobnobbing with European aristocrats to jamming with ragtime musicians, the unnamed narrator struggles to forge an identity in a culture that recognizes nothing but color. At the end, he discovers that the decision to pass brings its practitioners little more than a ruinous self-denial.