Ralph Ellison Books

Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) was an American author and scholar most well known for his award winning novel Invisible Man. Born in Oklahoma, Ellison was educated at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama before moving to Harlem, New York in 1936.It was in Harlem that he published his first short story and became involved with the Communist Party. By the mid-1940s he had become critical of the party and his disillusionment in part inspired him to write Invisible Man which was published in 1952 and won the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction. Ellison continued to write, mostly essays and reviews, and teach at various universities. His second novel Juneteenth was published posthumously in 1999.