Dec 28, 2009

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man | Summary

Chapters 1–3

As The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man opens, a first-person narrator announces that he is about to reveal “the great secret of my life,” a revelation that he hopes will ease his mind over a concern he will describe at the end of his story. He then begins the story of his life, from his birth in a small Georgia town a few years after the end of the Civil War.

As a young child, the narrator (who is never named) lives with his mother in a pleasant house, and they are visited often by a tall man with a moustache. One day, the boy...