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A Lesson Before Dying: Bibliography

A Lesson Before Dying
Bibliography
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Notes

table of contents
  1. A Lesson Before Dying
  2. Introduction To The Novel
  3. Transcriptions
    1. Opening Passage
    2. Grant Introduces Miss Emma
    3. Grant Chats with Inez in Pichot's Kitchen
    4. Grant's Lesson on Being a Hero
    5. Grant's Lesson on Being Like Scrap Wood
    6. Grant Argues with Reverend Ambrose
    7. Reverend Ambrose Retorts
    8. Jefferson's Monologue During Last Visit with Grant
    9. Grant and Jefferson's Final Visit
    10. Jefferson Begins His Diary
    11. Jefferson Ponders the Afterlife and Love
    12. Jefferson Describes Children's Visit
    13. Truck Delivers the Electric Chair
    14. Grant Notices the Butterfly
    15. Grant and Paul Discuss Jefferson
  4. Keywords
    1. Belief
    2. Capital Punishment
    3. Childhood
    4. Foodways
    5. Hero
    6. Historical Realism
    7. Humanism
    8. Incarceration
    9. Manhood
    10. Plantation
    11. Sugarcane
    12. White Supremacy
  5. Bibliography

Bibliography


ACLU, “What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?” (June 6, 2008). https://www.aclu.org/documents/what-school-prison-pipeline

Bardes, John. “Plantation Slavery in Antebellum Louisiana.” 64 Parishes, 20 June 2023, https://64parishes.org/entry/plantation-slavery-in-antebellum-louisiana-adaptation


Blackmun, Harry. Dissent for Callins v. Collins (Feb 23, 1994). https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-7054.ZA1.html


Brasseaux, Ryan. “Gumbo.” 64 Parishes, 21 December 2012. www.64parishes.org/entry/gumbo.


Castle, Tammy L. “Prison and jail systems.” Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2025.


Death Penalty Information Center. "Facts About the Death Penalty." 14 November 2025, https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/pdf/FactSheet.pdf.


Death Penalty Information Center, “Size of Death Row by Year.” https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-row/overview/size-of-death-row-by-year


“Drop for Louisiana Sugar Crop.” The New York Times, 17 November 1940. https://www.nytimes.com/1940/11/17/archives/drop-for-louisiana-sugar-crop.html


Edge, John T. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 7: Foodways. The University of North Carolina Press, 2007: 177-179.


Erfani, Azadeh. “Beyond Solidarity: 3 Reasons Why the Fight against White Supremacy Is an Immigrant Rights Priority - National Immigrant Justice Center.” National Immigrant Justice Center, 17 June 2020. www.immigrantjustice.org/blog/beyond-solidarity-3-reasons-why-the-fight-against-white-supremacy-is-an-immigrant-rights-priority/.


Estes, Steve. I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. University of North Carolina Press, 2005.


Folks, Jeffrey J. “Communal Responsibility in Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying.” The Mississippi Quarterly 52.2 (1999): 259–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26476861.


Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. Vintage Books, 1993.


Gaudet, Marcia and Carl Wooton. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writer’s Craft. Louisiana State University Press, 1990.


Gravois, Kenneth. “Louisiana’s Sugarcane Industry.” LSU AgCenter, 31 May 2005, https://www.lsuagcenter.com/portals/communications/publications/agmag/archive/2001/fall/louisianas-sugarcane-industry


Holland, Rachel. “Fueling Louisiana’s Sweet Success: How LSU’s Research Keeps the Sugarcane Industry Thriving.” LSU, 14 April 2025, https://www.lsu.edu/blog/2025/04/value-to-state-sugarcane.php


Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. “Losing Manhood: Animality and Plasticity in the (Neo)Slave Narrative.” Qui Parle 25.1-2 (2016): 95-136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/quiparle.25.1-2.0095


Jordan, Winthrop D. “The Negro Bound by the Chain of Being.” In White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. University of North Carolina Press, 1968: 482-511. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807838686_jordan.19


Magnis, Nicholas E. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery: An Analysis of His Racist Thinking as Revealed by His Writings and Political Behavior.” Journal of Black Studies 29.4 (March 1999): 491-509.


Malo, Dominique Saint. “What Is a Tragic Hero — Definition, Examples & Characteristics.” StudioBinder, 11 September 2020, www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-tragic-hero-definition/.


Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Critical Analysis of Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying.” Literary Theory and Criticism, https://literariness.org/2020/10/07/critical-analysis-of-ernest-j-gainess-a-lesson-before-dying/


McDonald, Rob. “Ernest J. Gaines’s Native Ground: Stories from a Visitation.” Story South 55 (Spring 2023): n.p.


Owens, Maida. “Louisiana Food Traditions: An Insider's Guide.” Louisiana Folklife Program 2000. www.louisianafolklife.org/lt/cse/creole_food_trad.html.


People, “Best of Pages” (Dec 27, 1993).


Pittman, LaShawnDa, et al. “Freedom Choices: How Black Mothers Living in Jim Crow Protected Their Children from Anti-Black Racism and Prepared Them for Success.” Genealogy 8.4 (2024): 136. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8040136.


Prison Policy Initiative, “Louisiana Profile.” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html


Ramsay, Courtney. "Louisiana Foodways in Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying." Louisiana Folklife Program 1995. www.louisianafolklife.org/lt/articles_essays/main_misc_gaines_foodways.html.


Reonas, Matthew. “Sharecropping.” 64 Parishes, 27 January 2011. https://64parishes.org/entry/sharecropping


Rios, Edwin. “Racial Inequality over Long US Prison Sentences Growing, Report Finds.” The Guardian, 21 July 2022, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/21/prisons-us-racial-equality-black-white-americans.


Sánta, Balázs. “Action Hero vs. Tragic Hero: First Blood, Cultural Criticism, and Schelling’s Theory of Tragedy.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS) 23.2 (2017): 331–46. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26894883.


Sawyer, Wendy and Peter Wagner. "Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025." Prison Policy Initiative, 11 March 2025. www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html


Scommegna, Paola. “U.S. Has World’s Highest Incarceration Rate.” Population Reference Bureau, 10 August 2012. https://www.prb.org/resources/u-s-has-worlds-highest- incarceration-rate/


Senna, Carl. “Dying Like a Man,” The New York Times (Aug 8, 1993), sec 7, pg 21. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/08/books/dying-like-a-man.html


Sharma, Shikha and Neetu Tyagi. “The Reflection of African American History and Culture in African American Literature.” Innovative Research Thoughts 10.3 (September 2024): 216-223. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26644759_The_Reflection_of_Race_and_Law_in_African_American_Literature.


Shaw, David. “Media Failed to Examine Alleged LAPD Abuses: Press: Eulia Love Case Brought a Tougher Look. But Complaints A.” Los Angeles Times, 26 May 1992, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-05-26-mn-147-story.html.


Sheppard, R.Z. “An A-Plus in Humanity,” Time (March 29, 1993). https://time.com/archive/6722729/an-a-plus-in-humanity/


Shugg, Roger W. “Survival of the Plantation System in Louisiana.” Journal of Southern History 3 (1937): 311-325.


Spector, Carrie. “70 Years after Brown v. Board of Education, New Research Shows Rise in School Segregation,” Stanford Graduate School of Education (May 6, 2024). https://ed.stanford.edu/news/70-years-after-brown-v-board-education-new-research-shows-rise-school-segregation


Steiker, Carol S. and Jordan M. Steiker. “The American Death Penalty and the (In)Visibility of Race.” The University of Chicago Law Review 82.1 (Winter 2015): 243–94. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43234696.


Williams, Michael. “Historical Realism.” In The Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations. Eds. Mlada Bukovansky, Edward Keene, Christian Reus-Smit and Maja Spanu. Oxford University Press (2023): 35-47.


Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation– An Argument.” The New Centennial Review 3.3 (Fall 2003): 257-337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.

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