{"product_id":"in-the-shadow-of-invisibility-ralph-ellison-and-the-promise-of-american-democracy-hardcover","title":"In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eSterling Lecater Bland\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith \u003ci\u003eIn the Shadow of Invisibility, \u003c\/i\u003e Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. offers a long-overdue reconsideration of Ralph Ellison, examining the trajectory of his intellectual thought in relation to its resonances in twenty-first-century American culture. Bland charts Ellison's evolving attitudes on several central topics including democracy, race, identity, social community, place, and political expression. This compelling new exploration of Ellison's legacy stresses the perpetual need to reexamine the intersections of race, literature, and American culture, with particular attention to how the democratic principle has grown increasingly urgent in the nation's ongoing, and often contentious, conversations about race. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eArguing that Ellison saw racial and social identity as being inseparable from the nation's past and its complicated history of racial anxiety, \u003ci\u003eIn the Shadow of Invisibility\u003c\/i\u003e traces the growth and transformation of Ellison's ideas across his life and work, from his early apprentice writing that culminated in his groundbreaking first novel, \u003ci\u003eInvisible Man, \u003c\/i\u003e through the posthumous publication of his unfinished second novel, \u003ci\u003eThree Days before the Shooting\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003e . . .\u003c\/i\u003e Focused on his mythic vision of the promise of America, this book firmly situates Ellison in the sociopolitical environments from which his ideas arose, with close consideration of his published writings, including his influential essays on literature and jazz, as well as his working notes and correspondence. Bland foregrounds Ellison's thinking on the responsibilities of Black writers to examine democratic ideals, the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and the impacts of civil rights movements. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eInterweaving biography, history, and literary criticism, and drawing from extensive archival research, \u003ci\u003eIn the Shadow of Invisibility\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the extent to which Ellison's work exposes the contradictions inherent in American culture, arguing anew for the importance and immediacy of his writings in the broader context of American intellectual thought.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eSterling Lecater Bland Jr. \u003c\/b\u003eis professor of English, African American studies, and American studies at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eVoices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation\u003c\/i\u003e and the editor of \u003ci\u003eUnderstanding 19th-Century Slave Narratives \u003c\/i\u003eand the three-volume \u003ci\u003eAfrican American Slave Narratives: An Anthology.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 304\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1.42 x 9.06 x 6.06 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eIllustrated:\u003c\/strong\u003e Yes\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e December 14, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42096743383175,"sku":"9780807178508","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0601\/2623\/2711\/files\/de728774608de4249b202afdb863f24b.webp?v=1732344635","url":"https:\/\/booksby.splitshops.com\/products\/in-the-shadow-of-invisibility-ralph-ellison-and-the-promise-of-american-democracy-hardcover","provider":"Books by splitShops","version":"1.0","type":"link"}