Native American Heritage Month
Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison’s Followers (2,037)

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Ralph Ellison


Born
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, The United States
March 01, 1913

Died
April 16, 1994

Genre
Literature & Fiction, Politics, Nonfiction

Influences
Hemingway, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Louis Armstrong, Richard Wright, ...more


Ralph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.

Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old. ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 3.92 · 207,226 ratings · 10,307 reviews · 88 distinct works • Similar authors
Invisible Man
3.92 avg rating — 200,595 ratings — published 1952 — 43 editions
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Juneteenth
by
3.60 avg rating — 2,242 ratings — published 1999 — 2 editions
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Flying Home and Other Stories
3.90 avg rating — 857 ratings — published 1996 — 28 editions
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Shadow and Act
4.10 avg rating — 629 ratings — published 1960 — 28 editions
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Battle Royal
3.86 avg rating — 452 ratings
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The Collected Essays
by
4.36 avg rating — 309 ratings — published 1995 — 11 editions
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Living with Music: Jazz Wri...
by
4.12 avg rating — 235 ratings — published 2001 — 4 editions
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King of the Bingo Game
3.57 avg rating — 179 ratings — published 1944
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Going to the Territory
4.22 avg rating — 106 ratings — published 1986 — 6 editions
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A Party Down at the Square
4.27 avg rating — 99 ratings — published 1996
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More books by Ralph Ellison…

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Quotes by Ralph Ellison  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
tags: freedom, identity, independence, self-awareness, self-discovery
3952 likes
Like

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
3919 likes
Like

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
tags: control, defeat, humanity, life
2214 likes
Like

Polls

May 2022 Revisit the Shelf Poll

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (1874) 443 pages, last read Nov. 2016
 
  64 votes, 26.3%

The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942) 123 pages. last read Feb 2016.
 
  56 votes, 23.0%

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982), 448 pages, last read Sept. 2016
 
  32 votes, 13.2%

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952), 581 pages, last read Oct 2016
 
  30 votes, 12.3%

King Lear by William Shakespeare (1605) 335 pages (must have a lot of notes!) Last read Oct, 2012
 
  24 votes, 9.9%

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877), 247 pages, last read May 2016
 
  23 votes, 9.5%

Howards End by E.M. Forster (1910) 368 pages, last read in Feb. 2019.
 
  14 votes, 5.8%

243 total votes
More...

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