SOURCE: Meyer, Jr., William E. H. “Ernest J. Gaines and the Black Child's Sensory Dilemma.” CLA Journal 34, no. 4 (June 1991): 414-25.

In the following essay, Meyer discusses the characterization of the protagonists of “A Long Day in November” and “The Sky Is Gray,” noting the internal conflicts between different sensory orientations that define their respective identities as African American youth.

America, what have you done to yourself,                               To me, one of your citizens?           You've distorted the human landscape,                               And painted the senses white! 

—Matthew Kellum-Rose, “America”

Each of the first two stories in Ernest J. Gaines' Bloodline—“A Long Day in November” and “The Sky Is Gray”—describes a black boy or youth attempting to come to terms not just with the world in which he lives, his parents' problems, and the racism which circumscribes him but, more importantly, with the sensory orientation of his own body, the struggle...