Ralph Waldo Ellison / Invisible Man

Born in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ralph Waldo Ellison studied music at Tuskegee Institute, spending his free time reading modernist classic literature. In 1936 he moved to New York City and was introduced to the black literary establishment by author Langston Hughes. About 1943 he met Harlem residents John and Amelie Bates, who had a farm in Fayston, Vermont. On leave from the Merchant Marines in 1945, Ellison summered with the Bates in Vermont, where he was determined to find his voice as a novelist. Sitting in the Fayston barn he penned the first sentence of Invisible Man: “I am an invisible man.” He said the opening line was delivered by “a taunting, disembodied voice” he could not ignore.

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Invisible Man tells the story of an unnamed African American man who loses his sense of identity in the world of prejudice and hostility, invisible due to others’ refusal to see him for who he is because of the color of his skin. The first-person narrative, set in 1930s Deep South and New York City, took five years to complete. Published in 1952, Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction, making Ellison the first African American writer to receive the award. The book is a classic American picaresque novel of the 20th century, a genre of fiction with a roguish but appealing hero who uses his wits to survive in a corrupt world. The Fayston barn where Ellison conceived his story no longer stands.