Category Archives: Essays/Readings

“Invisible Man: (1952) A novel by Ralph Ellison. Although he wrote only two novels, Invisible Man firmly established Ellison’s reputation. This powerful story is about a nameless black man’s search for his own identity in a world that is essentially inimical to him. Through the narrator’s transition from an initial acceptance of the guise invented for him by the whites of a southern town, to his identification and eventual rejection of his role in a Black Nationalist Group in Harlem, where he becomes no more than a puppet and a pawn, Ellison portrays the irony of the African-American search for self, a portrayal that avoids excessive emotionalism through the use of irony and wit. The narrator’s struggle for identity, though perceived through the black/white racial dichotomy, is universal. In its perception of the absurdity of human existence, and its handling of this central existential theme, it has been ranked with the works of Camus and Sartre….”

[This entry in Benet’s goes on to erroneously identify Shadow and Act, a book of Ralph Ellison’s essays, as a novel. Hence the ellipses, which omits that error. That said, Mr. Ellison’s Collected Essays, which includes Shadow and Act, is a supremely edifying book. And, while searching for the preceding link, I noticed that The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison was published in December of 2019. I will certainly be on the lookout for that volume, and very much look forward to reading it.]

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

“Charles Waddell Chestnutt: “(1858-1932) American novelist. Chestnutt, sometimes referred to as the first black American novelist, was a teacher, newspaperman, and lawyer. His first story, ‘The Goophered Grapevine,’ appeared in The Atlantic in 1887. His first book, The Conjure Woman (1899), centered on Uncle Julius McAdoo, a character with similarities to Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. His later books dealt with race prejudice, the best known being The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). In 1928, Chestnutt received the Spingarn gold medal for his pioneer work in depicting the struggles of African Americans.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.