Ralph Ellison

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

Invisible Man

d5d49007-a66a-4c2a-a2d5-a1f1d33c7c1c-1

An African-American man's search for success and the American dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility. Reissue. 30,000 first printing.

Charles Johnson

Kentucky

From the author of bestselling Invisible Man--the classic novel of African-American experience--this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.

"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? 

Here is the master of American vernacular at the height of his powers, evoking the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech.

"An extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall." --Newsday

Juneteenth

3fde540b-245b-4b1a-a158-f24c17955d16-1

Minnesota

And Other Stories

Written between 1937 and 1954 and now available in paperback for the first time, these thirteen stories are a potent distillation of the genius of Ralph Ellison. Six of them remained unpublished during Ellison's lifetime and were discovered among the author's effects in a folder labeled "Early Stories." But they all bear the hallmarks--the thematic reach, musically layered voices, and sheer ebullience--that Ellison would bring to his classic Invisible Man.

The tales in Flying Home range in setting from the Jim Crow South to a Harlem bingo parlor, from the hobo jungles of the Great Depression to Wales during the Second World War. By turns lyrical, scathing, touching, and transcendently wise, Flying Home and Other Stories is a historic volume, an extravagant last bequest from a giant of our literature.

Flying Home

0ec9b96d-f76b-429f-b859-506ea020f239-1

Minor damage to lower left corner, otherwise pristine.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison

7b4854e2-02b6-4443-9f97-6f1d897871ce-1

A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that trace the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

Saul Bellow

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Georgia

In this collection of essays and interviews, Ellison writes of literature and folklore, jazz and black culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. This volume includes the critically acclaimed works Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986).

The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

8215dfab-8a6e-4322-9ae1-ea87d1cec1a0-1

Revised and Updated

Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings

Before Ralph Ellison became one of America’s greatest writers, he was a musician and a student of jazz, writing widely on his favorite music for more than fifty years. Now, jazz authority Robert O’Meally has collected the very best of Ellison’s inspired, exuberant jazz writings in this unique anthology.

Living with Music

At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind several thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Five years later, Random House published Juneteenth, drawn from the central narrative of Ellison’s epic work in progress. Three Days Before the Shooting . . . gathers in one volume all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published. Set in the frame of a deathbed vigil, the story is a gripping multigenerational saga centered on the assassination of a controversial, race-baiting U.S. senator who’s being tended to by an elderly black jazz musician turned preacher. Presented in their unexpurgated, provisional state, the narrative sequences brim with humor and tension, composed in Ellison’s magical jazz-inspired prose style. Beyond its compelling narratives, Three Days Before the Shooting . . . is perhaps most notable for its extraordinary insight into the creative process of one of this country’s greatest writers, and an essential, fascinating piece of Ralph Ellison’s legacy.

Three Days Before the Shooting ...

Albert. Murray

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray

This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion.

The correspondence begins in 1950 when Ellison is living in New York City, hard at work on his enduring masterpiece, Invisible Man, and Murray is a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Mirroring a jam session in which two jazz musicians "trade twelves"--each improvising twelve bars of music around the same musical idea-their lively dialog centers upon their respective writing, the jazz they both love so well, on travel, family, the work literary contemporaries (including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway) and the challenge of racial inclusiveness that they wish to pose to America through their craft. Infused with warmth, humor, and great erudition, Trading Twelves offers a glimpse into literary history in the making--and into a powerful and enduring friendship.

Trading Twelves

Alice Walker

James Baldwin

Jon Meacham

Maya Angelou

America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement

A literary anthology of important and artful interpretations ofthe civil rights movement and the fight against white supremacy, past and present-including pieces by Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Richard Wright, and John Lewis

"Jon Meacham . . . has done about the best job of anthologizing the movement that I've ever seen."-Tom Wicker,Mother Jones

Editor andPulitzer Prize-winning authorJon Meacham has chosen pieces by journalists, novelists, historians, and artists, bringing together a wide range of perspectives and experiences. The result is an unprecedented and powerful portrait of the movement's spirit and struggle, told through voices that resonate with passion and strength.

Maya Angelou takes us on a poignant journey back to her childhood in the Arkansas of the 1930s. On the front page ofThe New York Times, James Reston marks the movement's apex as he describes what it was like to watch Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his heralded "I Have a Dream"speech in real time. Alice Walker takes up the movement's progress a decade later in her article "Choosing to Stay at Home- Ten Years After the March on Washington."And John Lewis chronicles the unimaginable courage of the ordinary African Americans who challenged the prevailing order, paid for it in blood and tears, and justly triumphed.

Voices in Our Bloodis a compelling look at the movement as it actually happened, from the days leading up to World War II to the anxieties and ambiguities of this new century. The story of race in America is a never-ending one, andVoices in Our Bloodtells us how we got this far-and how far we still have to go to reach the Promised Land.

This powerful anthology contains works from-

Maya Angelou . Russell Baker . James Baldwin . Taylor Branch . Hodding Carter . Ellis Cose . Stanley Crouch . Ralph Ellison . William Faulkner . Marshall Frady . Henry Louis Gates, Jr. . Peter Goldman . David Halberstam . Alex Haley . Elizabeth Hardwick . Charlayne Hunter-Gault . Murray Kempton . John Lewis .Louis E. Lomax . Benjamin E. Mays . Willie Morris . Flannery O'Connor . Walker Percy . Howell Raines . James Reston . Carl T. Rowan . John Steinbeck . William Styron . Calvin Trillin . Alice Walker . Robert Penn Warren . Pat Watters . Bernard Weinraub . Eudora Welty .Rebecca West . E. B. White . Gary Wills . Tom Wolfe . Richard Wright

Voices in Our Blood

Booker T. Washington

Charles W. Chesnutt

W. E. B. Du Bois

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Claude McKay

Lillian Smith

Langston Hughes

Erskine Caldwell

Richard Wright

Eudora Welty

Robert Hayden

Margaret Walker

Gwendolyn Brooks

Flannery O'Connor

Audre. Lorde

Estate of Lucille Clifton

June Jordan

Michael S. Harper

Haki Madhubuti

Nikki Giovanni

Constance Curry

Toi Derricotte

Wanda Coleman

Marilyn Nelson

Rita Dove

Anthony Grooms

Cyrus Cassells

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Frances E. W. Harper

Mary Burrill

Angelina Weld Grimké

Dudley Randall

Martin Luther King

Howard Sackler

Eldridge Cleaver

David Hernandez

Bebe Moore Campbell

Patricia J. Williams

Walter Mosley

Amiri Baraka

Florida

American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation

This title offers perspectives on civil rights not found in history books. This anthology of drama, essays, fiction, and poetry presents a thoughtful, classroom-tested selection of the best literature for learning about the long civil rights movement. Unique in its focus on creative writing, the volume also ranges beyond a familiar 1954-1968 chronology to include works from the 1890s to the present. The civil rights movement was a complex, ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. In ways that historical documents cannot, these collected writings show how Americans negotiated this process - politically, philosophically, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively.Gathered here are works by some of the most influential writers to engage issues of race and social justice in America, including James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. The volume begins with works from the post-Reconstruction period when racial segregation became legally sanctioned and institutionalized. This section, titled 'The Rise of Jim Crow,' spans the period from Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the second section, 'The Fall of Jim Crow,' Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' and a chapter from ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X"" appear alongside poems by Robert Hayden, June Jordan, and others who responded to these key figures and to the events of the time.'Reflections and Continuing Struggles,' the last section, includes works by such current authors as Rita Dove, Anthony Grooms, and Patricia J. Williams. These diverse perspectives on the struggle for civil rights can promote the kinds of conversations that we, as a nation, still need to initiate.

The Civil Rights Reader

97e08932-a86f-4f10-b60f-ee891da9fca7-1

Oklahoma

English

"Get your "A" in gear!
They're today's most popular study guides-with everything you need to succeed in school. Written by Harvard students for students, since its inception "SparkNotes(TM) has developed a loyal community of dedicated users and become a major education brand. Consumer demand has been so strong that the guides have expanded to over 150 titles. "SparkNotes'(TM) motto is "Smarter, Better, Faster because:
- They feature the most current ideas and themes, written by experts.
- They're easier to understand, because the same people who use them have also written them.
- The clear writing style and edited content enables students to read through the material quickly, saving valuable time.
And with everything covered--context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else!




4e3ab686-694c-4a0d-b8fb-12ba4027aabd-1

Texas

With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem—“the scene and symbol of the Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man. On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers.

Shadow and Act (1994 Edition)

5624bc87-ff64-4792-a596-32f1335b02da-1

Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America.

Shadow and Act

Browse by categories

Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

Juneteenth

Ralph Ellison

Flying Home

Ralph Ellison

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

Living with Music

Ralph Ellison

Three Days Before the Shooting ...

Ralph Ellison

Trading Twelves

Alice Walker

Voices in Our Blood

Booker T. Washington

The Civil Rights Reader

Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

Shadow and Act