BOOK/POEM - The Invisible MAN by Ellison and Hughes

Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994)

Born in 1914 in Oklahoma City, the grandson of slaves, Ralph Waldo Ellison and his younger brother were raised by their mother, whose husband died when Ralph was 3 years old. His mother supported her young family by working as a nursemaid, a janitor and a domestic.

From an early age, Ellison loved music and expected to be a musician and a composer. He played his first instrument - a cornet - at age 8. By 19, he had enrolled at Tuskegee Institute as a music major, playing the trumpet. Although drawn to jazz and jazz musicians, Ellison studied classical music and the symphonic form because he was looking forward to a career as a composer and performer of classical music.

In the summer of 1936, Ellison went to New York City to earn expenses for his senior year at Tuskegee. It was a fateful decision: He never returned to his studies at Tuskegee and never became a professional musician. While in New York, Ellison met the writer Richard Wright. When they first became acquainted, Ellison had every intention of returning to Tuskegee. But the Great Depression prevented him from earning the needed funds.

Eventually, he got a job doing research and writing for the New York Federal Writers Program, an offshoot of the Works Progress Administration. He also began writing essays and short stories for the “New Masses,” “The Negro Quarterly,” “The New Republic,” “Saturday Review” and other publications.

With the outbreak of World War II, Ellison joined the U.S. Merchant Marine as a cook, saw action in the North Atlantic and began to think of writing a major novel. However, not until after the war did he begin writing what was to become “Invisible Man.”   MORE

A milestone in American literature--a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.  The first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967)

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

James Langston Hughes was born in Missouri in 1902. Growing up, he wanted to become a lawyer but was thankfully not allowed to take the qualifying exam. In his childhood, he moved amongst many towns and states often and therefore had no sense of belonging anywhere. He was strongly influenced by the writings of Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Just out of high school, while returning home from staying with his biological father in Mexico, Hughes wrote his famous first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” He found himself drawn to the life of jazz and blues in Harlem and dropped out of Columbia University to become a part of it. He worked ordinary jobs in West Africa, Paris, and Italy, only to return to America as a poet. He earned a bachelor’s degree and supported himself with his writing, which included not only poetry, but also satire, short stories, children’s literature, non-fiction, opera lyrics, plays, and movies. Many people recognize his poetry because of its rhythmic, lyric quality and vernacular tone. Due to surgical complications, Langston Hughes died on May 22^nd, 1967.

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