The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman - Ernest J Gaines

"This is a novel in the guise of the
tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has
lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a
witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this
woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure,
a woman equipped to stand beside William
Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The
Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has
'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the
rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other
great works The Odyssey for the way
his heroine's travels manage to summarize the
American history of her race, and Huckleberry
Finn for the clarity of her voice, for
her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years
and things to find the one true story in it all."
-- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek.

"Stunning. I know of no
black novel about the South
that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit
and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and
poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female
character in Southern fiction since Lena of
Faulkner's Light In August than Miss
Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld,
Life