My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last summer, many Americans have begun to reckon with our country’s racist past. While there are plenty of amazing anti-racist books that have been published recently, there is also a great body of literature from black author’s and thinkers of the past that can also address our current moment. Invisible Man is one of those classic novels and though it was published 70 years ago, its message of how racial oppression erases black and brown people hits you in the gut just as powerfully today as it did back in 1952.
Following the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator, readers on taken on a journey of oppression from the South and a black college to Harlem in the North and meetings of a communist group. At each point, the narrator faces some form of oppression that seeks to use him and erase his identity as an individual. Each moment is gut wrenching and, to be honest, a feel little too much like our own period.
Considering our country’s past struggles with racism, I know I should not be shocked by what Mr. Ellison wrote in these pages, and yet I was. I was floored by every incident that slowly erased our narrator and brought him to his decrepit situation at the end of the novel. The fact that it still feels as though our country is dealing with the issues just makes this book all the more tragic. 70 years after publication, this book is just as relevant today to our present discussions of racism as it was back in 1952.
Though this was a gut wrenching book, I was also amazed by its writing craft and structure. This is just as much as classic American novel as books like The Grapes of Wrath and the novels of James Baldwin. This book, I believe, should be required reading for all Americans.
No comments:
Post a Comment