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Books by Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man: A Novel
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The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison /
Juneteenth: A Novel /
Shadow and Act /
Flying Home and Others Stories
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Going to The Territory /
Trading Twelves; The Selected Letters of Ralph
Ellison and Albert Murray
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Invisible Man
By Ralph Ellison
A Brother Betrayed
Review
by T.E. Cassidy
You meet the hero of this novel in his
underground home. Then you go back to whence he came. He is the
offspring of a Southern college for Negroes. He has left there,
though he loved it, because he took Mr. Norton, a benevolent
white trustee, around the region and showed him that which he
should not have seen: the seamy, dreadful slums and bums of his
race. Dr. Bledsoe, the pious old fraud who is the president, is
enraged, and dismisses the boy (with letters of introduction to
other benevolent trustees) to find work up North. He finds
himself emerging from underground into Harlem. He distributes
the letters, finally, and nothing happens, save a further
introduction to a nightmare in a factory. Actually the truth is
that in the letters, Dr. Bledsoe, in righteous prose, has done
him in.
He is bewildered and befriended, in rapid
succession. Mary, a benign elderly lady, takes him in. When he
finds his work in the factory, he is set upon by his
surroundings and his fellow man. Then, one day, he witnesses an
eviction of some old people, his own black people. He finds out,
when he bursts out in angry speech at this outrage, that he is
powerful and persuasive; that people will listen, urge him to
talk further, and themselves be urged to action. He is pursued
by “Brother Jack” of the “Brotherhood,” signs up, goes
in training, and returns to the beginning of triumph and horror
as a member of the movement, a Brother in the Brotherhood, and a
leader who discovers that his power is an overwhelming,
obsessive tumult.
He is entangled beyond belief. He sees blacks
and whites versus blacks for the seizure of all the blacks. His
various brothers, both colors, and his enemies, both colors,
ride him and lead him and follow him and almost destroy him,
until, finally, he and “Ras the Exhorter” are throwing
spears at each other, literally, in one mad street scene where
Ras, the leader of the all-blacks-for-blacks, is astride a
horse, with shield, headgear, and lance, charging, raging, and
exhorting all the while.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is
really many men. He is not only the embodiment of the Negro
race. He is the conscience of all races. He is the result of
both conscious and unconscious torture, one man to another. He
is the horror of history, the triumphant yell of bitter fate. He
is blasted hope, and he is also the revived spirit. He is the
mad leader and the blind follower. He is rampant, and his
rampage starts in the sky and ends in a coal pit. His light is
the light of God, and the light of 1,369 bulbs, stolen from
Monopolated Light and Power. He, himself, is pure power and
smashed power. And he is probably, in some way, you.
This is a novel of violence, to be sure. It
is a novel written with force and fire, but it is a novel, too,
that sputters sometimes, almost as if the author were unwilling
to write well when his invisible man shows signs of becoming
visible. It has surging scenes and fantastically detailed
characterizations. Even when the man leads in the Brotherhood, he
is the driven. In public meetings and in committee meetings, he
is the blisterer, but also the blistered. He drifts back and
forth, in an out of the movement—at its core and at its
fringes. He has great theories and insane practices. And the
violence erupts regularly, be it in the form of special
self-torture through the mind, or in the madness of the scene in
which the man is disgusted and degraded by an invitation to
rape, or in the almost epic proportions of the final riot in the
book.
One might select a continual underlying
theme: betrayal. The man is betrayed at the very beginning by
his own blacks and by whites, to whom he is an object to be
either eliminated or used for fun. He is betrayed by his college
president and by the trustee. He is betrayed by the factory
bosses and the workers, and, most blazingly, by his Brothers.
Yet all the time, he is the one who is accused of being the
betrayer—just as he has always been the driven. Perhaps this
is the greatest single moving feature of this sprawling work:
the invisible man’s inability to belong, visibly, on any level
of existence. He is always forced to dig in, to fight, to hide,
to pretend to be another, and finally to disappear. But despite,
everything that happens he is willing, at the end, to reappear.
Ellison stands somewhat alone as a novelist.
He is not a Richard Wright yet, but really he is quite
different. He is more diffuse, more introspective, but somehow
less powerful. He is more dramatic, perhaps, but less
compelling. He blends the weird and the warm, the grotesque and
the appealing, often with fine effect, so that if your attention
wanders, it always comes back. You must call him, finally and
simply, dynamic. Source: Commonweal (May 2, 1952)
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Africa Unite
By Bob Marley
Africa, Unite
'Cause we're moving right out of Babylon
And we're going to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man, yeah
To see the unification of all Africans, yeah
As it's been said already let it be done,
yeah
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
Africa, unite 'cause the children wanna come
home
Africa, unite 'cause we're moving right out
of Babylon
And we're grooving to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man
To see the unification of all Rastaman, yeah
As it's been said already let it be done
I tell you who we are under the sun
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
So, Africa, unite, Africa, unite
Unite for the benefit of your people
Unite for it's later than you think
Unite for the benefit of your children
Unite for it's later than you think
Africa awaits its creators, Africa awaiting
its creators
Africa, you're my forefather cornerstone
Unite for the Africans abroad, unite for the
Africans a yard
Africa, Unite |
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The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
In this
groundbreaking work, historian and scholar
Rediker considers the relationships between
the slave ship captain and his crew, between
the sailors and the slaves, and among the
captives themselves as they endured the
violent, terror-filled and often deadly
journey between the coasts of Africa and
America. While he makes fresh use of those
who left their mark in written records (Olaudah
Equiano, James Field Stanfield, John
Newton), Rediker is remarkably attentive to
the experiences of the enslaved women, from
whom we have no written accounts, and of the
common seaman, who he says was a victim of
the slave trade . . . and a victimizer.
Regarding these vessels as a strange and
potent combination of war machine, mobile
prison, and factory, Rediker expands the
scholarship on how the ships not only
delivered millions of people to slavery,
[but] prepared them for it. He engages
readers in maritime detail (how ships were
made, how crews were fed) and renders the
archival (letters, logs and legal hearings)
accessible. Painful as this powerful book
often is, Rediker does not lose sight of the
humanity of even the most egregious
participants, from African traders to
English merchants.—
Publishers
Weekly |
Marcus Rediker
is professor of maritime history at the University of
Pittsburgh and the author of
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987),
The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), and
Villains of All Nations (2005), books that
explore seafaring, piracy, and the origins of
globalization. In The Slave Ship, Rediker
combines exhaustive research with an astute and highly
readable synthesis of the material, balancing
documentary snapshots with an ear for gripping
narrative. Critics compare the impact of Rediker’s
history, unique for its ship-deck perspective, to
similarly compelling fictional accounts of slavery in
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved and Charles Johnson’s
Middle Passage. Even scholars who have written
on the subject defer to Rediker’s vast knowledge of the
subject. Bottom line:
The Slave Ship is sure to become a
classic of its subject.— Bookmarks
Magazine
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The Price of Civilization
Reawakening American Virtue and
Prosperity
By
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Price of Civilization is a
book that is essential reading for every
American. In a forceful, impassioned,
and personal voice, he offers not only a
searing and incisive diagnosis of our
country’s economic ills but also an
urgent call for Americans to restore the
virtues of fairness, honesty, and
foresight as the foundations of national
prosperity. Sachs finds that both
political parties—and many leading
economists—have missed the big picture,
offering shortsighted solutions such as
stimulus spending or tax cuts to address
complex economic problems that require
deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we
have profoundly underestimated
globalization’s long-term effects on our
country, which create deep and largely
unmet challenges with regard to jobs,
incomes, poverty, and the environment.
America’s single biggest economic
failure, Sachs argues, is its inability
to come to grips with the new global
economic realities. Sachs describes a
political system that has lost its
ethical moorings, in which ever-rising
campaign contributions and lobbying
outlays overpower the voice of the
citizenry. . . . Sachs offers a plan to
turn the crisis around. He argues
persuasively that the problem is not
America’s abiding values, which remain
generous and pragmatic, but the ease
with which political spin and
consumerism run circles around those
values. He bids the reader to reclaim
the virtues of good citizenship and
mindfulness toward the economy and one
another.
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 11 August 2008
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