He soon found that Jane's own voice was more powerful and decided to make the book a fictional autobiography, an idea inspired by Gertrude Stein's
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Like his fictional creation, Gaines was also born and raised on a plantation, the River Lake Plantation, in Louisiana. Many stories he heard throughout his childhood about plantation life ended up in this novel.
While many of Gaines's other novels and short stories also reflect this culture, the character of Jane was influenced by a very important woman in his life: a maternal great-aunt named Augusteen Jefferson. She was Gaines's primary caregiver until the age of fifteen, and worked to ensure that he was fed and clothed. She was also determined and vigorous, and though handicapped, she did not feel sorry for herself. Gaines dedicated the novel to her. The fictional town of Bayonne that appears in the novel is also based on a community near his childhood home, New Roads. Like Jimmy in the last section of the novel, Gaines himself wrote letters for the older African American people who lived on the plantation and could not read or write themselves.
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