In 1933, he attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, intent on becoming a composer. He studied the cornet and then trumpet and piano. He became something of a Renaissance man - turning to sculpture, photography and music. Rampersad says Ellison spent the rest of his life trying to redress his impoverished beginnings. had virtually nothing and was dependent on others." "And so he - although he had influential upstanding friends and patrons in his youth, he really was always aware that he.
"The death of his father when he was 3 was the decisive event of his earlier life because it plunged his family into poverty," says Ellison biographer Arnold Rampersad. His father died at the age of 39 after an accident delivering ice to a grocery store. He was born in Oklahoma City to Lewis and Ida Ellison, who named him Ralph Waldo Ellison after the 19th century American writer Emerson. "Whether we look at the invisibility of a Trayvon Martin, or the invisibility of a Magic Johnson in light of the most recent controversy over Don Sterling," Muhammad says, "or even the ways in which the contemporary art world for black visual artists turn on whether they have a responsibility to depict blackness through traditional narratives - are all themes that Ralph Ellison brought to his work."Įllison drew on his own struggles to create Invisible Man.
How?Įllison's treatment of race in the 1952 novel anticipated questions about the future of African-Americans that still resonate, says Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg center and the great-grandson of the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Invisible Man Author Ralph Ellison
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