Saying that Ernest J. Gaines is a Southern African-American writer who often writes about manhood is one way to begin appreciating his literary achievement, but ultimately those labels are much too limiting.
        Gaines is a Southerner in much the same way that William Faulkner was a Southerner. His best works are rooted in the sugar cane fields and plantations of Louisiana, just as Faulkner's are reaped from the cotton fields and plantations of Mississippi. Gaines himself says he came from "a place where people sat around and chewed sugar-cane and roasted sweet potatoes and peanuts in the ashes and sat on ditch banks and went into the swamps and went into the fields - that's where I can from." That place - River Lake Plantation in Point Coupee Parish - is as much a character in his work as any of his human characters.
     Gaines no doubt is one of America's best contemporary black writers, but it is more accurate to say he is an important modern American writer who happens to be black. As he has said, "I never think of myself as number one a black writer, quote black, or Louisiana black, but as a writer who happens to draw from his environment what his life is, what heritage his is."     

     And as a writer who grew up on a plantation where his parents worked as sharecroppers and where his ancestors labored as slaves, Gaines has always grappled with the question, "What does it mean to be a man?" Emancipation and Civil Rights may have restored the black's humanity, but black men continue to wrestle with questions of manhood, the theme of two of Gaines' best novels, A Lesson Before Dying and A Gathering of Old Men. And yet, in The Auto biography of Miss Jane Pittman, Gaines creates a memorable 110-year-old black woman who witnesses the end of slavery in 1865 and the rise of black militancy in the 1960s.
     I first encountered the full power of Gaines' prose in A Lesson Before Dying. I knew, because the cover said so, that the 1993 novel had won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. I didn't know about the Pulitzer Prize nominations for that book and for "Miss Jane Pittman" and the MacArthur Foundation "genius award" that Gaines won after 30 years of writing. The awards and honors, while impressive, didn't tell me anything I didn't know from my reading of A Lesson Before Dying. The proof was in the prose and Gaines' story-telling powers. Gaines' life-affirming novel lost none of its power during a recent second reading. Further

confirmation of Gaines' earthy eloquence came in the form of "A Gathering of Old Men" (1983) and "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" (1971).
     Set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is narrated by Grant Wiggins, a university-trained plantation school teacher who reluctantly takes on a "special" student. Jefferson, a young black field hand, is wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death by electrocution. The defense attorney, in a desperate, misguided plea for mercy, had told the court that executing Jefferson was little better than putting "a hog in the electric chair." Grant's charge, imposed on him by his aunt and Jefferson's godmother, is to undo what the defense attorney has done. As the godmother tells Grant, "I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet." In trying to teach Jefferson about manhood, heroism and sacrifice, Grant himself becomes a student who learns about the redeeming power of love.
     Like A Lesson Before Dying, A Gathering of Old Men is set on a south Louisiana plantation, but now the year is 1979. Again the plot revolves around a killing, this time of a Cajun farmer whose violently racist family leases the plantation. The obvious suspect is Mathu, an old black with a reputation for standing up to whites. Candy Marshall, the white part-owner of the plantation for whom Mathu has served as a sort of father figure, tries to protect him by confessing to the murder. In an effort to further obscure the killer's identity, she summons all the elderly black men of the area, tells them to bring shot guns similar to the murder weapon, and asks them to also claim guilt for the killing. Gaines tells the story by masterfully weaving 15 different narrative voices - black and white, male and female, young and old, educated and unschooled, racist and humane.
     In The Autbiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Gaines uses a single narrative voice, that of a fictional 110-year-old black woman, to weave a big, rich tapestry of the African-American experience from Emancipation to the modern Civil Rights era. Gaines develops the novel from purported tape-recorded interviews of the title character and others who know her. Early in his researches Gaines' historian/editor is frustrated by the story's lack of unity. But, as Jane's caretaker Mary advises him, you can't always tie up all the loose ends. Consequently, the story becomes not only the "autobiography" of the gritty Jane Pittman, but a biography of her enduring race.
     Gaines has said he has never been concerned about his "place" in American literature. "I don't give a damn what category people put me in," he once told an interviewer. "if they buy my books, they can put me in any category they want." My advice is, go out and buy a few of his books. Most likely, you'll put him in the category of important modern American literature. •
Joseph Cosco is assistant professor of English at Old Dominion University.

"YOU'VE NEVER HAD any possessions to give up, Jefferson. But there is something greater than possessions -and that is love. I know you love her and would do anything for her. Didn't you eat the gumbo when you werent hungry, just to please her? That's all we're asking for now, Jefferson - do something to please her."
     "What about me, Mr. Wiggins? What people don to please me?"
     "Hasn't she done many things to please you. Jefferson? Cooked for you, washed for you, taken care of you when you were sick? She is sick now, Jefferson, and she is asking for only one thing in this world. Walk like a man. Meet her up there."
     "Y'all asking a lot, Mr. Wiggins, from a poor old nigger who never had nothing."
     "She would do it for you"
     "She go to that chair for me, Mr. Wiggins? You? Anybody?"
     He waited for me to answer him. I wouldn't.
     "No. Mr. Wiggins, I got to go myself. Just me, Mr Wiggins. Reverend Ambrose say God'd be there if I axe Him. You think He he there ill axe Him, Mr. Wiggins?"
     "That's what they say, Jefferson."
     "You believe in God, Mr. Wiggins?"
     "Yes, Jefferson, I believe in God."
     "How ?"
     "I think it's God that makes people care for people, Jefferson. I think us God makes children play and people sing. I believe it's God that brings loved ones together. I believe it's God that makes trees bud and food grow out of the earth."
     "Who makes people kill people, Mr. Wiggins?"
     "They killed His Son, Jefferson."
     "And He never said a mumbling word"
     "That's what they say."
     "That's how I want to go, Mr. Wiggins. Not a mumbling word."
     Another cowboy song was playing on the radio. but it w as quiet and not disturbing. I could hear inmates down the cellblock calling to one another. Jefferson sat forward on the bunk, his big hands clasped together again. I stilt had the notebook. I started to open it, but changed my mind.
     "You need anything Jefferson?"
     "No, I don't need nothing, Mr. Wiggins. Reverend Ambrose say I don't need nothing down here no more." •