The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

"This is a novel in the guise of the  tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has  lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a  witness to the black militancy of the 1960’s. In this  woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure,  a woman equipped to stand beside William  Faulkner’s Dilsey in The Sound And The  Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has  ’endured,’ has seen almost everything and foretold the  rest. Gaines’ novel brings to mind other  great works The Odyssey for the way  his heroine’s travels manage to summarize the  American history of her race, and Huckleberry  Finn for the clarity of her voice, for  her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years  and things to find the one true story in it all."  — Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek.

"Stunning. I know of no  black novel about the South  that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit  and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and  poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female  character in Southern fiction since Lena of  Faulkner’s Light In August than Miss  Jane Pittman." — Josh Greenfeld,  Life