by Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City in 1914. Though his talents and interests were varied, he decided in high school to pursue a career as a musician. In 1936, three years into a music degree at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, he left for Harlem with his trumpet, hoping it might bring him enough money to return for a final year of study. However, after spending several lean months there, Ellison revised his plans. Too poor to return to Tuskegee, he took inspiration from his new friends, writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, and decided to develop his literary skills. Between 1945 and 1952, while he was writing Invisible Man, Ellison published articles in well-known journals such as Antioch Review, New Republic, and Saturday Review. His ambitious novel undertakes nothing less than a panoramic examination of the psychological, cultural, and political lives that African Americans led in the...