Reading The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | Alexandria
Read The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. Probing racial identity through jazz-era duplicity, this groundbreaking novel exposes how "passing" reveals America's arbitrary racial constructs. The narrator's choice to live as white challenges assumptions about authenticity and survival, forcing us to confront how privilege shapes identity. His mastery of ragtime music becomes a metaphor for cultural appropriation's complex legacy.