Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

Masked in the tradition of the literary confession as practiced by such writers as St. Augustine and Rousseau, this "autobiography" purports to be the candid account of its narrator's private views and feelings as well as an acknowledgement of the central secret of his life: that though he lives as a white man, he is, by heritage and experience, an African American. Tracing his journey from the South to the North and from America to Europe and back again, the narrator's first hand experiences on both sides of the colourline intimately demonstrates the qualities of race that are both established yet mutable. An important exploration into identity and how to establish it, Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is a timeless and vital novel.

James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871-June 26, 1938) was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life he became a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.

Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He published The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man anonymously in 1912, to avoid controversy, only acknowledging writing the novel in 1927, maintaining it wasn't a memoir.