Gaines's work is usually categorized as Southern fiction or African-American fiction, and showcases elements of oral history, slave narratives, and the influences of fellow Southerners William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.  It is structured as an interview with a 110 year old black woman, Miss Jane Pittman, who has lived to see well over a century of progress (and lack thereof) in African-American history and American society.  Gaines placed this work in a mythical area of Louisiana, and Miss Jane's ideas and reminisces are communicated using regional dialect and local color, and exploring the tragedy of slavery itself, the tragedy of its legacy, and the sometimes near-impossibility of breaking the ties that bind one to an unhappy past.   

What genre does The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines fit into?

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is usually categorized as Southern fiction, African-American fiction, or sometimes even the more general historical fiction.  Gaines created a unique structure to tell this story, setting it up as an interview between a fictitious high school history teacher, who is looking for authentic primary source information to make history come alive, and the fictitious, 110 year old Miss Jane Pittman, whose life extends back to the days of slavery prior to the American Civil War and has continued on through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.

Gaines's ability to capture the flavor of the South is sometimes compared to that of William Faulkner, whose influence in his writing is not difficult to see.  Miss Pittman recounts her experiences in a way that combines the features of oral history with the old slave narratives, using her own native black dialect, and earning Gaines the credit for creating a historical narrative fraught with realism and personal history.