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The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison
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Three Days Before the Shooting...
- By: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan - editor, Adam Bradley - editor
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey
- Length: 63 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly 2000 pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible Man. Five years later, Random House published Juneteenth, drawn from the central narrative of Ellison’s unfinished epic. Three Days Before the Shooting... gathers together in one volume, for the first time, all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published.
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Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,625
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,000
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Story4 out of 5 stars 6,002
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of 20th-century African-American life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching - yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Masterfully written; perfectly narrated
- By Imhokhai on 03-04-13
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Flying Home and Other Stories
- By: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan - introduction
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
These 13 stories by the author of The Invisible Man "approach the elegance of Chekhov" ( The Washington Post) and provide "early explorations of [Ellison's] lifelong fascination with the 'complex fate' and 'beautiful absurdity' of American identity" (John Callahan).
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Juneteenth
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Moreton's Brilliant Performance of Juneteenth
- By ok on 07-10-12
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Black Reconstruction in America
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 37 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 49
This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America has justly been called a classic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The textbook you should have had in high school.
- By Kennedy on 05-06-18
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A Rage in Harlem
- A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel
- By: Chester Himes
- Narrated by: Samuel L. Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 843
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 769
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Story4 out of 5 stars 764
Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Hardboiled Goodness
- By Ilana on 04-03-12
-
Three Days Before the Shooting...
- By: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan - editor, Adam Bradley - editor
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey
- Length: 63 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly 2000 pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible Man. Five years later, Random House published Juneteenth, drawn from the central narrative of Ellison’s unfinished epic. Three Days Before the Shooting... gathers together in one volume, for the first time, all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published.
-
Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 6,625
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,000
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 6,002
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of 20th-century African-American life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching - yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Masterfully written; perfectly narrated
- By Imhokhai on 03-04-13
-
Flying Home and Other Stories
- By: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan - introduction
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1
These 13 stories by the author of The Invisible Man "approach the elegance of Chekhov" ( The Washington Post) and provide "early explorations of [Ellison's] lifelong fascination with the 'complex fate' and 'beautiful absurdity' of American identity" (John Callahan).
-
Juneteenth
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Moreton's Brilliant Performance of Juneteenth
- By ok on 07-10-12
-
Black Reconstruction in America
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 37 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 49
This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America has justly been called a classic.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The textbook you should have had in high school.
- By Kennedy on 05-06-18
-
A Rage in Harlem
- A Grave Digger & Coffin Ed Novel
- By: Chester Himes
- Narrated by: Samuel L. Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 843
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 769
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 764
Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson ( Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Hardboiled Goodness
- By Ilana on 04-03-12
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The Souls of Black Folk
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,071
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 931
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 929
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” writes Du Bois, in one of the most prophetic works in all of American literature. First published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. Du Bois’ writing draws on his early experiences, from teaching in the hills of Tennessee, to the death of his infant son, to his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Essays of 'life and love and strife and failure'
- By ESK on 02-08-13
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Native Son
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,308
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,135
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,138
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent!
- By Patrick on 08-21-10
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The Source of Self-Regard
- Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 33
Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection - a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Refreshing thoughts
- By Amazon Customer on 04-02-19
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 274
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 254
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 253
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
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Olio Live
- By: Tyehimba Jess
- Narrated by: Piper Goodeve, Kayla White, Jaylene Clark Owens, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,565
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,430
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,429
The word "olio" means a hodgepodge, or a miscellaneous collection of literary or musical selections. In Olio Live - a very special one-night performance recorded live at the Minetta Lane Theater in February 2019 - poet Tyehimba Jess introduces listeners to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Olio. He is joined on stage by writer, editor, and Literaryswag founder Yahdon Israel, as well as a stellar cast of actors interpreting a selection of the poems from the collection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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BEAUTIFUL
- By Jackie GREEN on 06-09-19
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Fire and Blood
- A History of Mexico
- By: T. R. Fehrenbach
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 35 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
T. R. Fehrenbach brilliantly delineates the contrasts and conflicts between the many Mexicos, unraveling the history while weaving a fascinating tapestry of beauty and brutality: the Amerindians, who wrought from the vulnerable land a great indigenous Meso-American civilization by the first millennium BC; the successive reigns of Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Mexic masters, who ruled through an admirably efficient bureaucracy and the power of the priests, propitiating the capricious gods with human sacrifices; the Spanish conquistadors, and much more.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book bad narration
- By Mark A. Raine on 03-23-19
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The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 459
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 366
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Story4 out of 5 stars 371
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful story, wonderful reader
- By AmazonCustomer on 02-07-11
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Black Leopard, Red Wolf
- The Dark Star Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 629
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 601
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 594
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose", people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent, he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The most difficult book I've read recently
- By Carey Nelson on 05-03-19
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The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- By: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Clayborne Carson - editor
- Narrated by: Levar Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,072
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 842
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Story5 out of 5 stars 838
He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world. Now, in a special program commissioned and authorized by his family, here is the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring King's I Have a Dream Speech.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Fascinating Slice of History
- By John-Mark Stensvaag on 08-05-03
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African and African-American Religions
- By: Victor Anderson
- Narrated by: Ben Kingsley
- Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4 out of 5 stars 21
The religious ideas and practices of African peoples have much in common with each other, and with related religions in the Caribbean and the Americas. African Islam and African Christianity have developed separately since their earliest time in Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Sudan.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Very cursory overview of religions in Africa.
- By Misty Knight on 12-04-18
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- By: Harriet Jacobs
- Narrated by: Audio Élan
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 218
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 217
Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, written under the pseudonym Linda Brent, details her experiences as a slave in North Carolina, her escape to freedom in the north, and her ensuing struggles to free her children. The narrative was partly serialized in the New York Tribune, but was discontinued because Jacobs’ depictions of the sexual abuse of female slaves were considered too shocking. It was published in book form in 1861.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book!
- By Shakayla on 03-31-13
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Nobody Knows My Name
- More Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story5 out of 5 stars 26
James Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name records the last months of this famed American writer's 10-year self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem, and his first trip south at the time of the school integration battles. It contains Baldwin's controversial and intimate profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman. And it explores such varied themes as the relations between blacks and whites, the role of blacks in America and in Europe, and the question of sexual identity.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent on all counts!
- By Stephen York on 12-03-17
Publisher's Summary
Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, this classic collection includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as "a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race," and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. "Ralph Ellison", wrote Stanley Crouch, "reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans."
Critic Reviews
"[Ellison's] essays never fail to be elegantly written, beautifully composed, and intellectually sophisticated." (Los Angeles Times)
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- Mr. C. G. Moore
- 07-17-18
Too highbrow, dry and sadly boring
I wanted to hear a sample of Ralph Ellison's work before buying this however all the samples are of the introduction and not representative. This is pretty highbrow and dry for me unfortunately. I wanted to hear his writing on Jazz mainly and there are 3 or 4 essays on the subject however most is on the role of African Americans in 20th Century. His essays range from deeply descriptive and poetic and dry academic analysis, but too little of the former. And I am left with little idea of his point.
It is mainly dry essay and I lasted about 10h in before pulling the plug. There maybe some hidden gems but they are well hidden. Only to be used for as reference for a degree in African American History