In 1936, Ellison went to New York over the summer with the intent of earning enough money to pay for his college expenses, but ended up relocating. A budding instrumentalist, Ellison took up the cornet at the age of eight and years later, as a trumpeter, attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he studied music with his eye on becoming a symphony composer. In his future book of essays Shadow and Act, Ellison described himself and several of his friends growing up as young Renaissance Men, people who looked to culture and intellectualism as a source of identity. His mother Ida then raised Ellison and younger brother Herbert by herself, working a variety of jobs to make ends meet. He died from a work-related accident when Ellison was only three years old. Ellison's doting father, Lewis, who loved children and read books voraciously, worked as an ice and coal deliverer. Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and named after journalist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison's unfinished novel Juneteenth was published posthumously in 1999. He published his bestselling, acclaimed first novel Invisible Man in 1952 it would be seen as a seminal work on marginalization from an African American protagonist's perspective. Ralph Ellison studied music before moving to New York City and working as a writer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |