Bloom, Harold, Ralph Ellison, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.

Bloom's text is a collection of critical essays on Ellison's fiction and non-fiction.

Butler, Robert J., The Critical Response to Ralph Ellison, Greenwood Press, 2000.

This work is a collection of critical essays on Ellison's work that were published since the release of his posthumously published work.

Nadel, Alan, Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon, University of Iowa Press, 1988.

Nadel offers a collection of essays addressing Ellison's ambivalent relationship to other prominent American authors, including Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway,and William Faulkner.

Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Oxford University Press, 1966.

Woodward's book is the definitive work detailing the relationship between the civil rights movement and the decades of segregation that preceded it. Provides detailed literary and historical background on the most commonly.