Annotation
"This is the biography of one of the most important American writers and cultural intellectuals of the twentieth century - Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man." "In 1953, Ellison's explosive story of an innocent young black man's often surreal search for truth and his identity won him the National Book Award for fiction and catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison went on to earn many other honors, including two presidential medals and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Now, as the first scholar given complete access to Ellison's papers, Arnold Rampersad has written not only a reliable account of the main events of Ellison's life but also a complex, authoritative portrait of an unusual artist and human being." "This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man both admired and reviled, whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America."--BOOK JACKET.
Awards
2008 Black Caucus of the America Library Association Award
2008 California Book Awards
2007 New York Times Notable Books of the Year
| Genre | NonFiction Literary Biography |
| Topics | Authors African American culture American literature African American men African Americans Black history American history |