Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison [video 66min]

Arnold Rampersad researches the life of Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, whose meditations on African American identity won the 1953 National Book Award and critical acclaim. In 1936 Ellison came to New York, where he became politically radical and the essence of cosmopolitan intellectualism. Rampersad relays that Ellison ever wrote a second novel and would denounce his radical ideologies later in his life, when his lifestyle would be construed as a form of elitism and create a schism between himself and a younger generation of African American writers. Rampersad is a professor in the humanities at Stanford University and the author of biographies on Langston Hughes and Jackie Robinson, and collaborated with Arthur Ashe on his memoir, Days of Grace. He is a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He discusses his book at The Library of Congress in Washington DC.