Centuries hence, when the important Afro-American writers of our day are studied, perhaps Ralph Ellison--novelist, short-story writer, and essayist--will be considered the most indispensable. Already, a great many critics think that his Invisible Man...

Though his reputation rests on a single novel, many critics consider Ralph Ellison to be the preeminent Afro-American writer, and others have argued that Invisible Man ranks with the most significant American literary works of this century. In the...

At his death on 16 April 1994, Ralph Ellison had come to be recognized as one of the world's most distinguished men of letters, primarily on the strength of the only novel published during his lifetime, Invisible Man (1952). For this powerful first...

"I am an invisible man," announces the anonymous protagonist of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. "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,...

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on 1 March 1914, when the Southwest was still alive with the frontier spirit. Having become a state just seven years before, Oklahoma lacked the inexorable racial castes to be found at that time...

American author Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994) wrote "Invisible Man," a classic 20th-century American novel. He was an early spokesman among African Americans for the need for racial identity. Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City on March 1, 1914....