Talking With Ernest J. Gaines

Abstract

years old. Of course, I had not read any books here in Louisiana. If there were books there in the libraries, I would not have been allowed to go there, but I doubt that there were books by blacks at that time in the libraries around New Roads. When I went to California, I went to a small town. I went to Vallejo instead of San Francisco, but even there there were not too many books by black writers. All of my reading-even if I wanted to read about peasant life-turned out to be by white writers. When I went to college, I studied white writers. We're talking about the early fifties. Richard Wright was probably the most well-known black writer at that time, but his novel, Native Son, was not taught. Passages would be brought up in the class, why-Bigger-does-whathe-does type of stuff, why he is angry, and all this sort of thing. Invisible Man had just come out, but it was not in the curriculum yet. You did not read Invisible Man as a part of American literature at that time. At a place like San Francisco State at that time, you were still reading Hemingway, reading Faulkner. You were not reading the black writers then as you would be ten years later. When I was developing as a writer, the books were not there. They were not being taught in the classroom, and only a few of them were there. As I said, Native Son and Black Boy were there, and Invisible Man had just come out. Baldwin's essays were just being read, but they were not being taught. They were just there. At that particular time I was so far behind the average kid I had to go to school with because I had not read anything. I was still catching up, so I did not have time to go out and read anything other than what I was assigned to read. They'd say read Dry September this week for this class; read Dry September and read Twain's Huckleberry Finn. When the black novels were not taught, I didn't