Ernest J. Gaines was born on January 15, 1933, on the River Lake Plantation near New Roads, Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. He was the son of Manuel (a laborer) and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines. As a boy, Gaines worked in the plantation fields near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 1948 he moved to Vallejo, California with his mother and stepfather, (Gaines's parents separated when he was young). Gaines read voraciously in the Vallejo Public Library but found nothing that resonated with his own experience of life, since all the writers he read were white and did not portray blacks accurately.
Gaines attended Vallejo Junior College before being conscripted into the army in 1953. He served until 1955, writing fiction during his off-duty hours. After military service he enrolled at San Francisco State College (now University), where he.....
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