Ernest Gaines
I wanted to smell
that Louisiana earth, feel that Louisiana sun, sit under the shade of one of
those Louisiana oaks, search for pecans in that Louisiana grass in one of those
Louisiana yards next to one of those Louisiana bayous, not far from a Louisiana
river. I wanted to see on paper those Louisiana black children walking to
school on cold days while yellow Louisiana busses passed them by. I wanted to
see on paper those black parents going to work before the sun came up and
coming back home to look after their children after the sun went down. I wanted
to see on paper the true reason why those black fathers left home—not because
they were trifling or shiftless—but because they were tired of putting up with
certain conditions. I wanted to see on paper the small country churches
(schools during the week), and I wanted to hear those simple religious songs,
those simple prayers—that true devotion. . . . And I wanted to hear that Louisiana
dialect—that combination of English, Creole, Cajun, Black. For me there’s no
more beautiful sound anywhere—unless, of course, you take exceptional pride in
“proper” French or “proper” English. I wanted to read about the true
relationship between whites and blacks—about the people that I had known. (28)
From Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines (1990)
But I came from a
place where people sat around and chewed sugarcane and roasted sweet potatoes
and peanuts in the ashes and sat on ditch banks and told tales and sat on
porches and went into the swamps and went into the fields—that’s what I came
from (37).
I think of myself as
a writer who happens to draw from his environment what his life is, what his
heritage is. I try to put that down on paper . . . (81)
From “Talking with Ernest J. Gaines,” Louisiana Literature (1999)
My church is the oak
tree. My church is the river. My church is walking right down the cane field
road, on the headlands between rows of sugar cane. That’s my church. I can talk
to God there as well as I can talk to him in Notre Dame. I think he’s in one of
those cane rows as much as he is in Notre Dame. . . (65).
Yes, we need coming
together as a group to communicate, too. . . . But that’s the problem—we come
together to communicate with our own group, our own surroundings. When Wallace
Stegner asked me many years ago, “Who do you write for?” I said I don’t write
for anyone in particular. And he said, “What if a gun were put to your head?”
In that case, I said, I write for the Black youth in the South, and let them
know that this life is worth something—and I’m writing about him. And he said,
“What if the gun is still at your head?” And I said I’d write for the white
youth of the South to let them know that unless he knows his neighbor for the
last three hundred years, he only knows half of his own history. He only knows
a little about himself. I feel that way. Until we can really communicate with
each other, we’ll always have those problems—no matter what else we do, no
matter how much education we have. Unless we can communicate, unless we can all
gather together.
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