Reading Rampersad's highly tendentious biography has had, at least on this reader, the reverse effect its author intended. It has convinced me that Ralph Ellison was an even greater man than I had thought. His greatness consists of never suggesting, when so many people would have been pleased to hear him do so, that America was a racist country and every black person in it born a victim; of his relentlessly insisting that we all make our own way, each with the unpredictable combination of gifts and talents and temperament that culture and race and nationality bestow; of his love for the black culture in which he was born and his deep understanding of its true richness; of his unflagging assertion that separatism, racial or any other kind, is always a mistake; of his keeping cool during a time of frenzy and easy rage while being insulted by many of the people who should have admired him most of all.
-Joseph Epstein, as excerpted from the chapter on Ralph Ellison in his Essays in Biography
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment