A light-skinned Black man drifts between Black and white worlds in the Jim Crow South, Europe, and New York, and ultimately chooses to pass permanently as white, then wonders if he sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Books mentioned in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (4)
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan: “I found there _Pilgrim's Progress_, Peter Parley's _History of the United States_, Grimm's _Household Stories, Tales of a Grandfather_, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it was called _The Mirror_), a little volume called _Familiar Science_, and somebody's _Natural Theology_,…”
Tales of a Grandfather by Walter Scott: “I found there _Pilgrim's Progress_, Peter Parley's _History of the United States_, Grimm's _Household Stories, Tales of a Grandfather_, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it was called _The Mirror_), a little volume called _Familiar Science_, and somebody's _Natural Theology_,…”
Natural Theology by William Paley: “…a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it was called _The Mirror_), a little volume called _Familiar Science_, and somebody's _Natural Theology_, which last, of course, I could not read, but which, nevertheless, I tackled, with the result of gaining a permanent dislike for…”
Grimms' Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: “I found there _Pilgrim's Progress_, Peter Parley's _History of the United States_, Grimm's _Household Stories, Tales of a Grandfather_”