Published anonymously in 1912 because its author feared the consequences of putting his name to it, this novel follows an unnamed narrator who discovers his Black heritage only by accident, and who must repeatedly decide, at real cost, which world to live in.
James Weldon Johnson, later a leading civil rights figure and the author of Lift Every Voice and Sing, wrote a book so convincingly personal that early readers assumed it was a true memoir. It remains one of the sharpest examinations of racial identity ever published.
