Fifty Years of Ernest Gaines

Throughout his career, Pointe Coupee native Ernest Gaines has made it clear that his desire is to write about the people and the land where he is from—Oscar, La. After stepping into a library for the first time and finding the fiction section, Gaines began to, as he would say, “read, and read, and read.” He read books by Russian, Irish, French and American writers. In those books, he found descriptions of the land and peasants; however, he did not find images of Louisiana or the people he knew who worked the land. They were, in essence, invisible. Gaines decided to write about “his people,” those who did not appear in the novels by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Steinbeck, or Hemingway. He tried to write about San Francisco and his time in the military. Friends would ask him why he chose to write about the land around Oscar and New Roads while not touching on New Orleans. He simply responded that he did not know about New Orleans like he did the area around False River. Gaines’ has produced nine books about “his people.” They have been translated into eighteen different languages, and those books have garnered Gaines numerous national and international accolades. He received the National Humanities Medal in 2000 and the National Medal of Arts in 2013. The French government, in 2000, honored Gaines by conferring upon him the title of Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. But Gaines calls Pointe Coupee, and Oscar, home. That land and the people who live there are the subjects he honors through his writing and his legacy, providing them with a voice and relating their stories to the world.

This year marks a milestone for Gaines and his legacy. In October 1964, Atheneum published his first novel Catherine Carmier—the book that laid the groundwork for the rest of Gaines’ writing all the way through A Lesson Before Dying (1993). To celebrate, the Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has partnered with the Lafayette Public Library and the Louisiana Book Festival to commemorate the writer's life and work. Every Wednesday from September 17 through October 22 there will be events held at the South Regional Library in Lafayette and at the Ernest J. Gaines Center on the campus of ULL.

• September 17: Film screening of This Obsession of Mine and The Sky is Gray (South Regional Library)

• September 24: Film screening of A Lesson Before Dying (South Regional Library)

• October 1: Film screening of A Gathering of Old Men (South Regional Library)

• October 8: Film screening of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (South Regional Library)

• October 9: Bayou Book Talk on Ernest J. Gaines by Dr. Marcia Gaudet and Dr. Reggie Young (South Regional Library)

• October 10: 2nd Annual Ernest J. Gaines Lecture by Dr. John Lowe (Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

• October 15: Reading by Jeffery Renard Allen, 2009 winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence (Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette)

• October 22: Book discussion of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (South Regional Library)

• November 1: Reading by Gaines at the Louisiana Book Festival (State Capitol in Baton Rouge)

Along with these events, there will be items from the Ernest J. Gaines Center collection on display from October 9—November 9 at the South Regional Library in Lafayette and from October 1—December 1 at the State Library of Louisiana in Baton Rouge. The collection includes Gaines' manuscripts and personal papers, plus correspondence from well known figures such as Jessie Jackson, Alice Walker and James Baldwin alongside promotional material and scripts for the film adaptations of Gaines’ work.