The Frame

by James Weldon Johnson

This is not, despite the title, an autobiography. It is fiction. Interestingly, Johnson originally published it in 1912 anonymously, leading many people to think it was an actual autobiography of a biracial man passing as white. It’s still powerful, though, even when you know it’s not true–in fact, it adds a level of irony and self-referentiality that’s really cool. The man is “ex-colored” because he’s light enough to pass for white–in fact, he didn’t know himself that he and his mother were black until he was like, seven. His life takes him from Georgia as a little boy, to Connecticut, Harlem, Europe, the deep south, and eventually back to New York, and allows him to compare the treatment of the race question in all those places and among all classes of people. (Honestly, the range of his experiences should be enough to show the book is fiction…then again, Langston Hughes had similarly far-reaching experiences…) It’s a well-done book, and though it seems really simple, actually has many different layers to it, depending on how you choose to read it.
Well Above Average