Essay Questions

Does it matter that this “autobiography” is not actually a work of historical biography, but is purely a work of fiction influenced by historical events?

This is, of course, one of the central questions to be posed about the book. In “Authorized Novels and Nonfiction Annotated List” published in 1994 to be used in English Language Arts classes from grade 4 through grade 12, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the first listed title in the “Nonfiction” section. The edition of the very same work published in 2005 no longer separates fiction and non-fiction recommendations, but notably the description of the contents of the book remains unchanged: “Ernest Gaines taped Miss Jane Pittman's reminiscences in 1962 when she was already over 100 years old." This sentence is, of course, one-hundred percent completely untrue. It is not just untrue, it is impossible.

Keeping in mind that the book originally appeared in 1971, this means that those in charge of producing a list of book to be used in school curriculum were still laboring under the impression that it was a true story several decades later. Whether or not it matters that the story is not true is up to each individual reader, but considering that in addition to the above example there are also many booksellers who categorize the novel under as a work of non-fictional historical biography tends to suggest strongly that it really doesn’t matter. And that should be more troubling to more people than it appears to be.

What other novels are comparable to this one in terms of having been mistaken for stories about actual historical figures by so many readers?

A number of novels have been written over the years that have managed to worm their way into the public consciousness as being books that tell a true story about actual historical personages. Among just the most famous that comprise this list are Little Big Man, A Million Little Pieces, The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Roots. That last one might especially come as a shock to some as a result of the groundbreaking television miniseries it inspired. Tens of millions of Americans tuned in every night to watch what they believed to be was the true story of Alex Haley’s family lineage that he traced back to Africa. In reality, however, Haley’s book is—and always has been—categorized as a novel. This stands in stark contrast to A Million Little Pieces which was infamously revealed to be a work of fiction only after its author marketed it as a true life story.

William Styron is a white man who lived a century after Nat Turner and whom based parts of his novel upon the actual confessions of real life leader of a slave rebellion, Nat Turner. The collision between art and historical figure is perhaps most confusing here even though it was never in question that Styron had written a novel. As for Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, the idea that the often absurdly comic situations his hero gets into might actually be the true story of a real person is indicative of the wholesale fiction that is America’s understanding of the settling of the western frontier. That Miss Jane Pittman is very often thought to have actually existed is not a by-product of attempted fraud on the part of the author, but rather the product of writing a powerfully realistic work of fiction that seems almost impossible to believe didn’t really happen.

How does the novel differ from most books about the black experience in America by showing that white racism even victimized other white characters?

In a testament to the broad range and deep depth which Miss Jane Pittman’s story reveals the expansive scope of racism in America, even other white Americans are proven to be far from unscathed. In fact, by introducing the concept that racism is an infectious virus that leaves no one safe from its pestilential reach, the novel manages to extend the issue of racism beyond the boundaries to which it is usually confined. Written by a white author, of course, this might well have come off as a self-serving piece of self-victimizing, but that is clearly not the case here. It is, in fact, an essential point that it was a black writer who took the leap of making one of his white characters a victim of racism. That character is Tee Bob who becomes—and admittedly a quite different—a tragic victim of not just the racism of his fellow whites, but the effects of that racism upon the mindset of blacks to whom it is directed. Tee Bob finds resistance to his love for Mary Agnes not just from those racist whites of whom it might be expected from Mary Agnes herself for the exact same reasons, thus demonstrating the extent of the systemic derangement of racist viewpoints.