Big Read
February/March 2010
A Lesson Before Dying

THE BIG READ provides our citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within our community. J-MRL invites all book lovers to participate in this exciting program that will be held throughout the months of February and March 2010. The Library is partnering with the Virginia Foundation Center for the Book in THE BIG READ* designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. Visit the Center's BIG READ.

Creating a Nation of Readers

The Library's goal is to encourage all residents of Central Virginia to read and discuss "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest J. Gaines during this time. There will be many programs discussing the book and the time period.

Check the catalog for Library sources and author information. You can also check the database, Biography Resource Center, for more information about Ernest J. Gaines.

Ernest J. Gaines's "A Lesson Before Dying" (1993) poses one of the most universal questions literature can ask: Knowing we're going to die, how should we live? It's the story of an uneducated young African-American man named Jefferson, accused of the murder of a white storekeeper, and Grant Wiggins, a college-educated native son of Louisiana, who teaches at a plantation school. In a little more than 250 pages, these two men named for presidents discover a friendship that transforms at least two lives.

Ernest Gaines In the first chapter, the court-appointed lawyer's idea of a legal strategy for Jefferson is to argue, "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." This dehumanizing and unsurprisingly doomed defense rankles the condemned man's grief-stricken godmother, Miss Emma, and Grant's aunt, Tante Lou. They convince an unwilling Grant to spend time with Jefferson in his prison cell, so that he might confront death with his head held high.

White, black, mulatto, Cajun, or Creole; rich, poor, or hanging on; young, old, or running out of time-around all these people, Gaines crafts a story of intimacy and depth. He re-creates the smells of Miss Emma's fried chicken, the sounds of the blues from Jefferson's radio, the taste of the sugarcane from the plantation. The school, the parish church, the town bar, and the jailhouse all come alive with indelible vividness.

Gaines uses a capital case to explore the nobility and the barbarism of which human beings are equally capable. The story builds inexorably to Jefferson's ultimate bid for dignity, both in his prison diary and at the hour of his execution. That Ernest J. Gaines wrings a hopeful ending out of such grim material only testifies to his prodigious gifts as a storyteller.

For questions or if you would like to participate in some way please contact: bigread@jmrl.org

THE BIG READ is supported by the Art and Jane Hess Fund of the Library Endowment

Creating a Nation of Readers

Schedule of Events