Resistance Through Collaboration

What sort of invisibility is Ellison talking about?

When I was in graduate school, I supplemented my income by preparing headnotes and footnotes for the Harlem Renaissance section of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature under the direction of Arnold Rampersad (best known for his scholarship on Langston Hughes).

Part of my job was to provide brief occupational descriptions and the birth and death dates of historical figures mentioned in any of the snippets included in the anthology. For instance, when Zora Neale Hurston mentioned Franz Boas, I had to footnote Boas' name and mention that he was an ethnologist who lived from 1858 to 1942.

Usually, I didn't have to go very far to find such information. Hordes of historical figures (including the German-born Boas) were listed in the dictionary that I had been using since my undergraduate days, the revised edition of Random House's College Dictionary.

At first, I was impressed by the dictionary's biographical entries. I was astonished at how marginally significant some of the people listed in the dictionary were. I had the idea that only the most famous people should be listed in the dictionary, and was surprised to find listings for such literary critics as F.R. Leavis and I.A. Richards.

And so it was natural for me to turn to my dictionary when I needed to footnote a reference to Harriet Tubman. I was a little shocked--shocked enough that I've just rechecked my dictionary to be sure that I remembered correctly--to discover that Tubman is not listed in Random House's College Dictionary.

That's strange, isn't it? And not simply because Tubman is a heroic, compelling, and compassionate historical figure. What's really strange is that she's worlds and worlds more famous than Leavis and Richards and Boas combined. Chances are you never heard of those scholars. But I imagine that even college students in China reading about slavery in America encounter the name of Harriet Tubman.

In case you're wondering, Crispus Attucks doesn't get a listing in my dictionary. Neither does Malcolm X or Sojourner Truth. If the dictionary's purpose is to serve as a reference, presumably the biographical entries should be included on the basis of how likely we are to encounter references to the people concerned. I'll put Attucks, Truth and Tubman up against Leavis, Richards and Boas any day of the week in terms of the likelihood of an encounter.

So what were those lexicographers thinking? It's possible, of course, that they were being proactively exclusive--that they were trying to freeze out Tubman and the others in a bid for an endorsement from the KKK. But it's more likely that they just weren't thinking at all.

Not thinking inclusively is one of the subtler forms that racism takes, an unconscious and unmalicious but nevertheless powerful and hurtful and counterproductive form. I'm betting that the lexicographers just weren't thinking about famous black Americans because American culture teaches us to overlook black Americans, to treat them as if they are invisible, as if their contributions to American culture and history are best appreciated by being taken for granted. I think maybe that's part of the invisibility that Ellison examines in a book that deserves to be ranked with Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Wings of the Dove, The Sound and the Fury, and Lolita as one of the truly remarkable formal masterpieces of American literature. Skip this flawlessly structured and sparklingly polished gem at your peril.

Don't bother yawning; my introduction is over

From the opening chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, there is a complicated relationship between the various metaphors for invisibility and blindness that recur throughout the book. Even if you haven't read the book, you may have encountered the widely anthologized first chapter ("Battle Royal") in a high school or college English class.

The battle royal itself involves a number of blind-folded black boys who are thrown into a ring and forced to pummel one another for the amusement of the most powerful white men in their community. From the very beginning, in other words, Ellison establishes a link between invisibility, blindness and violence.

Our reaction to what we cannot see is to slug at it blindly in self-defense. Meanwhile, the ones who are really in control look on in mild amusement and kick us back into the fray when we try to escape. Although I would be the first to say that there's a pretty powerful lesson there, I would also be the first to point out that the book only gets better as the metaphors become more and more subtle--as images of and metaphors for blackness and whiteness and blindness and invisibility and light and electricity and violence and love are made to dance in the complicated and profoundly satisfying ways that masters of language are always able to make such metaphors dance.

Ellison flexes his literary muscle in chapter 2 ("Trueblood") by playing a careful game of literary one-upmanship with William Faulkner, perhaps the most celebrated American author to rely on incest as a metaphor for an overreaction to miscegenation. Ellison tells his own story of incest while relying on the wisteria of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and the honeysuckle of The Sound and the Fury in a masterful retelling of Quentin Compson's attraction to his sister Caddy.

Ellison gives us a rich white voyeur whose fixation on the beauty of his own daughter leads him to seek out an encounter with the Trueblood family, in which father-daughter incest has already been played out. But even as Ellison's treatment of incest is more graphic than Faulkner's, it is also more intelligent, more comprehensive, and more metaphorically informed. Whatever color you may be, Ellison will turn you, as the reader, into that rich white voyeur.

Because I am something of a formalist, I recommend Invisible Man primarily because it is an absolute pleasure to read. I can think of only half a dozen books that I've enjoyed as much--and none that I've enjoyed more. As an added bonus, however, the book will make you a more informed person about the politics within the African American community.

It is very easy to be dismissive of Booker T. Washington. It is easy to say that he should have been more like W.E.B. DuBois. Black leaders who seem to sell out to the white community in order to make incremental advances towards racial parity are lambasted by left-leaning whites and militant blacks alike. But the Booker T. Washingtons of this world are more complicated than they seem.

As the narrator of Invisible Man says, "My grandfather had been the meekest of men," the sort of man that whites might have been inclined to call "a credit to his race," as was so often said of Washington. But that meek grandfather, that man who had seemingly been pushed around his entire life, said on his deathbed: "Son, after I'm gone, I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open."

When the narrator goes to the Tuskegee Institute and sees the statue of Booker T. Washington removing a blindfold from a youngster's eyes, he observes that it's hard to tell whether Washington is putting the blindfold on or taking it off. However, the point of Invisible Man is not to condemn Washington's inscrutability, but to celebrate it.

How do you make them think that you're giving the empowered elite what they want while you're eroding the power structure that you so despise?

It's simple, really. You write a dazzlingly shrewd and irresistibly engaging book. Ellison did just that.


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This review is my contribution to the Black History Month Writeoff hosted by frazzledspice.

In commemoration of Black History Month, Epinions reviewers have joined together to participate in a book review writeoff. Our selections include works of adult and juvenile fiction, poetry, drama, biography, and non-fiction. Participating in this writeoff are: frazzledspice, jgibson2, jsgoddess, jnbmoore, brendamb, lunadisarm, nsgraham, hadassahchana, pippadaisy, caines, ed_grover, stephen_murray, and vemartin. Please check out their reviews and discover some excellent authors.