Ralph Ellison stands as a monumental figure in American literature and thought. His fiction, deeply influenced by jazz and the African American experience, profoundly explores themes of identity, race, and social invisibility. Ellison masterfully weaves philosophical inquiry with stark realism, dissecting the complexities of existence within the fabric of collective history. His essays further illuminate his sharp critical eye on culture, politics, and the arts.
Compiled and edited by Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, this collection includes previously uncollected and newly discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews in addition to the essay collections Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory . The preface is written by Saul Bellow
With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem—“the scene and symbol of the Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man.On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers.
In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto
02 A unique supplement to one of the most important African American novels of this century. As Invisible Man chronicles the major moments of African American life during the first half of the twentieth century, this volume illuminates and contextualizes the novel with a collection of speeches, essays, folktales, historical analyses, photographs, and other cultural and historical documents.
Set in Washington DC in the 1950s, an elderly black Baptist minister from Georgia visits a Senator on his deathbed. Their conversation and the memories it sparks take them back through the deeply buried secrets of their shared past, and finally to the tragic event that first brought them together.
Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the author of Invisible Man.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.
Ralph Ellison wurde 1914 in Oklahoma City als Sohn eines Bauarbeiters geboren. Er kam nach New York, um Musik und Bildhauerei zu studieren. 1952 erschien sein einziger Roman zu Lebzeiten, „Der unsichtbare Mann“, der 1965 zum bedeutendsten Werk der letzten Jahrzehnte gewählt wurde. 1994 verstarb Ellison in New York.
Ralph Ellison, einer der bedeutendsten afroamerikanischen Autoren, erzählt in seinem gefeierten Debüt die Odyssee eines namenlosen Schwarzen durch die amerikanische Gesellschaft. Das Buch ist eine schonungslose Auseinandersetzung mit Rassismus und ein Lob auf das Selbstbewusstsein der Kämpfenden um ihre Rechte.
