A review by jenmkin
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, Arna Bontemps

4.0

The thematic thread of the significance of music that Johnson weaves throughout the story and is such a beautiful way to represent the narrator’s process of decision making.
Parts of the book are hard to read, because Johnson doesn’t shy away from the harsh treatment of Black people in the South, but rather forces his readers to experience these truths along with his narrator, a necessary confrontation of the facts that refuses to romanticize or overlook something horrible.