Ralph Ellison

A letter on view from Ralph Ellison to the critic Kenneth Burke was written in 1945 soon after Ellison published “Richard Wright’s Blues,” an essay that includes a comparison of Wright’s rejection of his cultural origins as a Black man in the US South to Joyce’s rejection of Ireland. Ellison expanded his ideas in a public lecture that year at Bennington College and, when later speaking to a class, had an epiphany, as he tells Burke: “I went to Joyce for illumination of Negro life only to discover that it works both ways and that Negro life illuminates much of Joyce. From that single experience at Bennington I believe I have the key to a whole new system of Negro education. I know too much, however, about how this country is run to believe anyone would take an interest in doing anything about it.”