Ready Reference Treatise: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Overview

“The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” by Ernest J. Gaines was first published in the year 1971. The story revolves around the struggles of African American.

A woman named Jane Pittman happens to be the witness to the struggles and she narrates the story. She begins with the description of the major events which took place in her life from the time when she was a young slave girl in America South.

The story is set in the time period during and after the Civil War.
The novel through the major characters tells the stories which they recall and the stories cover a fairly long period of time in history.
There are a number of fictional characters in the story, but Jane and some other characters allude to various historical events and figures emerging the time period of close to one hundred years, as Miss Jane can recall.

Along with the description of the American Civil War, Jane gives the reference of the Spanish-American War, and she also narrates both World Wars and the starting of the Vietnam War.

The figures like Frederick Douglass, Booker, T. Washington, Jackie Robisson, Fred Shuttlesworth, Rosa Parks, and many other historical figures are mentioned by Jane and the other characters of the book.

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