Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman follows the life of one woman from her emancipation as a slave in the 1860s to her initiation into the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. A work of historical fiction, the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman takes place in rural Louisiana. It opens with an encounter between the ostensible "editor" of the novel, a high school history teacher, and Miss Jane Pittman, a woman who is about 110 years old. He wants to use her life story to teach his students history as it has affected real people. The editor attests that he has tried to reproduce Jane's story in her own words, and the rest of the novel is narrated from her point of view.
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