Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Talk about major changes. In an earlier version of the novel, the central character was going to be a cousin of Candy's that also happened to be of mixed ancestry. Gaines changed his mind when he realized he wanted to make the novel about a group of characters instead of just one single character.(Source, page 167)
There's no place like home. Literally. Gaines has said repeatedly that he can write about Louisiana from anywhere in the world because the Louisiana he's writing about—with the sharecroppers, small corner stores, and all of that country flavor—doesn't really exist anymore. Part of why he writes what he writes is to preserve memories of all of that.(Source, page 194)
What would it be like to read the words of a character speaking in a Southern accent in a totally different language? Gaines's novel has been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, and Swiss.(Source, page 196)