The Collected Essays of Ralph EllisonCompiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. “Ralph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.” |
Contents
| 3 | |
FLAMENCO | 15 |
HAVE NO OTHER IDENTITY | 36 |
Shadow and | 43 |
Living with Music | 195 |
The Golden Age Time Past | 204 |
As the Spirit Moves Mahalia | 215 |
On Bird BirdWatching and Jazz | 221 |
PRESENTATION TO BERNARD MALAMUD OF THE GOLD MEDAL | 419 |
Going to the Territory | 437 |
A Lecture at West Point | 465 |
What These Children Are Like | 483 |
The Myth of the Flawed White Southerner | 492 |
If the Twain Shall Meet | 501 |
What America Would Be Like Without Blacks | 513 |
A Dedication Speech | 520 |
The Charlie Christian Story | 230 |
Remembering Jimmy | 236 |
Some Questions and Some Answers | 253 |
The Shadow and the Act | 262 |
The Way It Is | 269 |
WORKING NOTES FOR INVISIBLE MAN | 297 |
A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO SUBSCRIBERS | 304 |
INDIVISIBLE MAN | 334 |
JAMES ARMISTEAD LAFAYETTE | 368 |
ADDRESS TO THE HARVARD COLLEGE ALUMNI CLASS OF 1949 | 378 |
HAVERFORD STATEMENT | 386 |
ALAIN LOCKE | 394 |
ROSCOE DUNJEE AND THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE | 401 |
THE DISCIPLINE OF AMERICAN HUMOR | 410 |
An Extravagance of Laughter | 543 |
Remembering Richard Wright | 581 |
Homage to Duke Ellington on His Birthday | 595 |
The Art of Romare Bearden | 602 |
Society Morality and the Novel | 611 |
A Very Stern Discipline | 637 |
The Novel as a Function of American Democracy | 661 |
Perspective of Literature | 670 |
ON BEING THE TARGET OF DISCRIMINATION | 711 |
BEARDEN | 719 |
FOREWORD TO THE BEER CAN BY THE HIGHWAY | 727 |
Acknowledgments | 737 |
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