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A review by ledimirnunez
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5.0
Invisible Man sits beside Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Herzog by Saul Bellow and The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. These are the books to read before you die.
In my second reading, nearly two years after the first, I find myself again engrossed in the latter half of Ellison's novel. I am 26 years old now, and will be turning 27 years old in a month. Perhaps it is age, or living in Harlem, or the mere coincidence of my experiences and those of the narrator's who starts out aiming to please.
By now it's evident that the books I am drawn to are those that ponder the questions of identity: who am I? What am I? What am I to do? Would these be the same questions that an artificial intelligence asks upon awakening? I digress, but to err is human and to ruminate on your errors is torture. The slope so slippery.
It's the vet that awakens you, but he was in the first half. It's Grandfather's curse that keeps you up, and though its repeated throughout, it haunts you. To agree them to death? Well isn't that the pain we're avoiding? And so everybody must suffer together or there is no other way. Who else? Brother Tarp - because you are who you are before you got here, and you can change but that's just the top layer. At the end of the day, we know who you are, we know what your place is. Stokely Charmichael said the Civil Rights movement wasn't for black folks who needed to know about equality, it was for white folks who needed awakening. That must be a terrible paraphrase, but listen to his speech delivered at UCLA in 1960-something.
Something inside of me exists that I don't want to see. Why do I make myself invisible to me? I could stand it if others believed I was invisible, but what about when I think I'm invisible too?
In my second reading, nearly two years after the first, I find myself again engrossed in the latter half of Ellison's novel. I am 26 years old now, and will be turning 27 years old in a month. Perhaps it is age, or living in Harlem, or the mere coincidence of my experiences and those of the narrator's who starts out aiming to please.
By now it's evident that the books I am drawn to are those that ponder the questions of identity: who am I? What am I? What am I to do? Would these be the same questions that an artificial intelligence asks upon awakening? I digress, but to err is human and to ruminate on your errors is torture. The slope so slippery.
It's the vet that awakens you, but he was in the first half. It's Grandfather's curse that keeps you up, and though its repeated throughout, it haunts you. To agree them to death? Well isn't that the pain we're avoiding? And so everybody must suffer together or there is no other way. Who else? Brother Tarp - because you are who you are before you got here, and you can change but that's just the top layer. At the end of the day, we know who you are, we know what your place is. Stokely Charmichael said the Civil Rights movement wasn't for black folks who needed to know about equality, it was for white folks who needed awakening. That must be a terrible paraphrase, but listen to his speech delivered at UCLA in 1960-something.
Something inside of me exists that I don't want to see. Why do I make myself invisible to me? I could stand it if others believed I was invisible, but what about when I think I'm invisible too?