Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 on the River Lake Plantation in Pointe Coupe Parish, Louisiana. He was part of the fifth generation of his family to be raised there. Raised by his crippled aunt, at the age of nine he began picking cotton and he attended school five/six months out of the year.
When he was 15, Gaines went to California to live with his mother and stepfather. His stepfather would not let him hang around on the street, for fear that he would get into trouble with the police, so Gaines spent time at the library instead. He credits this as inciting his interest in literature. Initially, he preferred to study European authors who wrote about peasants, with whose experiences...
