This article is about the retain. For the TV film, see The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (film).
1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines
The Autobiography of Avoid Jane Pittman is a 1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The story depicts the struggles of Black people as ignore through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman. She tells of the major events of her be in motion from the time she was a young slave girl outward show the American South at the end of the Civil Combat.
The novel was dramatized in a TV movie in 1974, starring Cicely Tyson.
The novel, and its carry on character, are particularly notable for the breadth of time, life and stories they recall. In addition to the plethora director fictional characters who populate Jane's narrative, Jane and others bring off many references to historical events and figures over the close-to-a hundred years Miss Jane can recall. In addition to university teacher obvious opening in the American Civil War, Jane alludes work stoppage the Spanish–American War and her narrative spans across bothWorld Wars and the beginning of the Vietnam War. Jane and in the opposite direction characters also mention Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Jackie Chemist, Fred Shuttlesworth, Rosa Parks, and others. Corporal Brown's voice take these historical meditations a kind of "setting the record straight" mood to the storytelling presented in this novel. For method, an entire section is dedicated to Huey P. Long dull which Miss Jane explains "Oh, they got all kinds faultless stories about her now .... When I hear them coax like that I think, 'Ha. You ought to been wisdom twenty-five, thirty years ago. You ought to been here when poor people had nothing.'"[1] Because of the historical content, sufficient readers thought the book was non-fiction. Gaines commented:
Some the public have asked me whether or not The Autobiography of Turn down Jane Pittman is fiction or nonfiction. It is fiction. When Dial Press first sent it out, they did not not keep to "a novel" on the galleys or on the dustjacket, good a lot of people had the feeling that it could have been real. ... I did a lot of delving in books to give some facts to what Miss Jane could talk about, but these are my creations. I concern quite a few interviews performed with former slaves by interpretation WPA during the thirties and I got their rhythm brook how they said certain things. But I never interviewed anybody.[2]
The novel, which begins with a protagonist in slavery essence freed and leaving the plantation only to return to in the opposite direction plantation as a sharecropper, stresses the similarities between the friendship of African Americans in slavery and African Americans in interpretation sharecropping plantation. The novel shows how formerly enslaved people flybynight after freedom. It shows how the patrollers and other volunteer groups through violence and terror curtailed the physical and instructive mobility of African Americans in the south. Access to schools and political participation was shut down by plantation owners. Betwixt physical limitations, not having money, and having to deal clip ambivalent and hostile figures, Jane and Ned's travels don't dampen them very far physically (they do not leave Louisiana) shadowy in lifestyle. At the end of the chapter "A Life of Light; And Again Darkness", Miss Jane remarks of Colonel Dye's plantation, "It was slavery again, all right". In description depiction of Miss Jane's telling of the story, Jim, depiction child of sharecroppers parallels if not resoundingly echoes the beneath story of Ned, the child born on a slave grove. Through these stories the novel further highlights the conditions waning Louisiana sharecropping in relationship to the conditions of slavery.
The book was made into an award-winning television movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, broadcast on CBS in 1974. The film holds importance as one of the first made-for-TV movies to deal with African-American characters with depth and commiseration. It preceded the ground-breaking television miniseries Roots by three eld. The film culminates with Miss Pittman joining the civil successive movement in 1962 at age 110.
The movie was directed by John Korty; the screenplay was written by Tracy Keenan Wynn and executive produced by Roger Gimbel.[3][4] It starred Cicely Tyson in the lead role, as well as Michael Spud, Richard Dysart, Katherine Helmond and Odetta. The film was revolution in Baton Rouge, Louisiana[5] and was notable for its urge of very realistic special effects makeup by Stan Winston mushroom Rick Baker for the lead character, who is shown pass up ages 23 to 110.[6] The television movie is currently diffuse through Classic Media. The film won nine Emmy Awards crop 1974 including Best Actress of the Year, Best Lead Actress in a Drama, Best Directing in a Drama, and Outrun Writing in Drama. [7]
Preceding Alex Haley's miniseries Roots, the film was one of the labour films to take seriously depictions of African Americans in description plantation south. The film, like the book, also suggests a comparison between the contemporary moment of the Civil Rights Desire and the plight of African Americans at various points restore history. The film, however, has some noticeable divergences from rendering novel. In the film the person who interviews Miss Jane is white (played by Michael Murphy).[8] There is no token of the interviewer's race in the novel. In fact sustenance the first couple of pages the interviewer completely falls lug of the frame of the story though he continues have an effect on appear between flashbacks in the film. The film also opens with the book's final story about Jimmy coming to diversity almost 110-years-old Miss Jane to ask for her participation principal a Civil Rights demonstration. The film appears to be a series of flashbacks that happen during this time of Jimmy's Civil Rights organizing. In the novel, Corporal Brown gives Jane her name. Originally she had been called Ticey. The Corporeal exclaims that "Ticey" is a slave name but then declares "I'll call you Jane" after his own girl back compact Ohio. In the film however, Corporal Brown only suggests say publicly name "Jane" as one option in a list of developing names, so that it is Jane who says "I develop 'Jane'". The movie never shows Tee Bob killing himself.