Ralph Ellison
By Kayla Sedbrook
His Life
• Born: Oklahoma
• Aspired for a career in Jazz Music
• Moved to New York & became a writer
Relations to W.E.B. Dubious and
Invisible Man
• Ellison excelled in High School, therefore,
in order to discourage him from attending
their schools, he was given a scholarship to
Tuskegee Institute. This is also similar to
IM’s situation. However, Ellison felt as the
institution was progressive. However, he
was unable to stay there because of lack of
funds.
Ellison’s Other Works
• Shadow and Act
– not as insightful to Ellison as Invisible Man
because it was one of his earlier works and
portrayed much of Richard Wright, who greatly
influenced his writing
Ellison’s Other Works
• Going to the Territory
– portrays Ellison as a philosopher believing in a
culturally pluralistic society, not an integration
of the races. Show his the mature Ellison
– However, both Going to the Territory and
Shadow and Act helped transform people’s way
of thinking. Invisible Man is seen as the most
insightful, though.
Problems
• Ellison thought it was problematic that
many authors at the time wrote literature
about black people targeted towards white
people. The problem with this was it made
people question how human blacks really
were. Therefore, he wanted to target his
literature at black people as well.
Bringing Change
• Ellison is seen as an author who brought
change to African American Literature
because of his targeting his literature
towards them too. Also, he wrote the truththe way things were that many people were
not willing to accept as true. IM represented
the invisibility that black people felt
everyday, all the time. His literature began
to make them visible.
Ellison’s view on Black and
White Culture
• “America did offer a context for discovering authentic
personal identity; it also created a space for AfricanAmericans to invent their own culture. And in Ellison's
view, black and white culture were inextricably linked,
with almost every facet of American life influenced and
impacted by the African-American presence -- including
music, language, folk mythology, clothing styles and
sports. Moreover, he felt that the task of the writer is to
‘tell us about the unity of American experience beyond all
considerations of class, of race, of religion.’”
• This shows how Ellison was before his time
Quote By Ralph Ellison
• No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar
Allan Poe;
nor am i one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.
I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and
liquids-and I might even be said to posses a mind.
I am invisible, understand, simply because people
refuse to see me.
Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus
sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by
mirrors of hard, distorting glass.
When they approach me they see only my
surroundings, themselves, or figments of their
imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=defTU3_
2yrA&feature=PlayList&p=1FB69BBAEF
BC5B9F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL
&index=13