The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

This 1912 novel is a fictional autobiography of an unnamed biracial man, with lessons and observations that are still fresh today. Alan Bomar Jones performs in a smooth voice. He adopts cultured, barely inflected tones for the narrative and the protagonist's dialogue, while using strong Southern and New York accents for the dialogue of other African-Americans. Jones's uninflected Spanish, French, and German phrases contrast sharply with Johnson's descriptions of the protagonist's near-native fluency. Full of sophisticated vocabulary, thoughtful ruminations, and detailed observations, the autobiography is replete with long discussions of race and discrimination as the hero travels throughout the South, New York, Boston, and Europe. Author James Weldon Johnson was a Harlem Renaissance writer as well as an educator, musician, and lawyer. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

David Sadzin's performance of this classic 1912 novel is evocative, even poetic. He creates a serious and persuasive portrayal of its tortured protagonist. Telling the unnamed man's story in the first person, he re-creates the character's intimate and intelligent tone and catches the cadence of his self-conscious yet assured voice. The listener follows the trajectory of the man, whose journey starts in boyhood, when he lives with his Black mother, rarely seeing his white father. A talented musician, he goes to New York City, where he pursues the life of a white man, marrying a white woman and having fair-skinned children. Race, race relations, and the complex story of a "negro" man passing for white provide the sociological underpinnings of this short but compelling audiobook. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine