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This compilation is based around the book Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings, and co-produced and annotated by that volume's editor, Robert G. O'Meally. The idea is to assemble various pieces of music with some connection to Ellison or his writings, with the specific threads -- a direct comment Ellison might have made on a track, for instance, or a song that's referred to in one of his stories -- explained in O'Meally's notes.

This is a track listing of an album composed of tracks that influenced Ellison in his work. An aspiring musician who went to school to study it, Ellison also grew close with many famous musicians in Harlem. These artists, including Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong were an essential part of a thriving social scene in Harlem while Ellison wrote invisible man. The last track is a recording of Ellison's 1964 address at the Library of Congress. He speaks about "blind men on corners" and the blacks who pretend to be part of a successful white society, people whom Malcolm X spoke so strongly against years later.

Ellison, Ralph (Ralph Waldo Ellison), 1914-94, African-American author, b. Oklahoma City, Okla.; studied Tuskegee Inst. (now Tuskegee Univ.). Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved (1936) to New York City, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.

It is interesting that Ralph Ellison attended Tuskegee institute. That was a trade school specifically designated for black people. He must have used his frustration for not having society's restraints keep him from attending a normal university to write Invisble Man. The narrator shares in some of the same challenges.

This literary review of IM praises the plot line, and discusses its relevancy to not only Harlem, but everywhere in the world where a social norm has developed. 

For there is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. In all other parts of the country people live in a kind of vastly standardized cultural prairie, a sort of infinite Middle West, and that means that they don't really live and they don't really do anything. Invisibility touches everyone, and Ellison helps to bring this fact to light.

"Most Americans thus are Invisible." Discusses both the faults of the novel as well as the powerful impact of the novel, and the application of it to all Americans, both past and contemporary. 

in Invisible Man this struggle toward self-definition is applied to individuals, groups, and the society as a whole. The particular genius of Invisible Man is Ellison's ability to interweave these individual, communal, and national quests into a single, complex vision. However, Ellison does not restrict himself to the concerns of African-Americans because he believes that African-American culture is an inextricable part of American culture. Thus, Invisible Man shows how the struggles of the narrator as an individual and as a representative of an ethnic minority are paralleled by the struggle of the nation to define and redefine itself.

This source is interesting because it describes Ralph Ellison life and work, while also portraying the fact that his colleague, Richard Wright, was a foil to him. While Wrights character's were unrefined, hot-tempered, and uneducated, Invisible Man is the opposite. The article also talks about Ellison's efforts to maintain cultural identity and traditional black culture in America.

shows alienation used by Ellison as a strategy in the invisible man, connecting it to slavery, Frederick Douglass, the postwar attitude of the 1940s, and the civil rights movement, all of which can be connected to Malcolm X.

The invisible man was important to the time period because Ellison challenged the way that African AMericans were typically characterized. When Ellison wrote Invisible Man, ther were few other novels that proposed the idea the black people were suffering from their lack of civil rights. He was ahead of his time.

In this article, the author tracks the growth of identity of IM from beginning to end, through three questions. The quotes are long, so I won't post them.

"Ellison's evolving political views had a deep impact on his continual re-envisioning of that novel's structure and content."

This article is a biography on Ralph Ellison which explains the time from his birth to his death. The article provides additional insight into Ellison's life and his early life ambitions. This article expresses how the events of Ellison's life and political views provide insight to the authorial purpose of the novel which is to bring the reader to the realization of their own oppressive behavior and hopefully change.

"Oklahoma-a rogue state of sorts, Southern in geography, but not slaveholding-gave mixed messages to the young Ellison"

This source discusses the background of Ralph Ellison, and his upbringing and how it shaped the way he wrote "Invisible Man". The source shows how his childhood and experiences make the novel have themes and topics still relevant today.

Discusses the Brotherhood's effects upon IM. Although supposedly designed to boost visibility and rights of black men, the party really only bends the thoughts, discipline, and lives of its followers to its own gain. Like Bledsoe, the Brotherhood bleeds the black men dry in order to keep them oppressed, while the top Brothers, white brothers, profit and thrive.

This source discusses the dehumanization of IM. Constantly, people use IM for their own benefit, and manipulate him to do their will. He is seen as an asset, even by the Brotherhood, the very organization which is supposed to be fighting invisibility. Over time, his identity is so manipulated and bent to the will of others that by the epilogue, IM has lost track of who he himself is supposed to be.

This is the finally realization that helps the reader know the the narator has matured and discovered how to overcme the oppression. He see the controlling his ow destiny and unity are the keys for success

This helps show the beginning of the narrator's process of maturity. He does not acknowledge the lack of trust nor the oppression against him. This helps show his blindness and ignorance

Source which coincides with Ellison's novel-ending accusation, that everyone, regardless of color or gender, oppresses someone else. In this case, IM oppresses women, viewing them as sex objects, rather than as living, breathing, human beings. Although he knows it's hypocritical to protest dehumanization and then to use people for himself, he allows himself to be swept away and to use the women anyway.

While the rest of the world was busy bashing African Americans and blacks in general, women were also fighting for their rights and being oppressed by all different races. Ellison displays this in IM by making women IM's weakness and using them as "bait"

goes into detail about the theme of invisibility and connects it to the real world. Relates the apocalyptic ending of the novel to the theme of invisibility, as well as discussing Ellison's literary influences

Ellison's difficulty, one cause of all the cuts, is that matter of self-definition. At a time when many blacks, especially the young, are denying all influences of American culture, Ellison, as always, doggedly affirms his identity as a Negro-American, a product of the blending of both cultures "I don't recognize any white culture," he says. "I recognize no American culture which is not the partial creation of black people. I recognize no American style in literature, in dance, in music, even in assembly-line processes, which does not bear the mark of the American Negro." Unlike Malcolm, he blends American and African. Like Malcolm, however, he sees that black people have a much larger influence on American life than given credit for.

"He accomplishes this by always remaining a man who. He refuses to be put into attributive categories, but subordinates the attributes to himself. He does not say, "I am a Negro, a writer, an American." He says, "I am a man who is a Negro, a writer, an American."

This source provides details on Ralph Ellison's background, and how he uses the writing style of making traits secondary instead of claiming them, which enhances his writing and makes it less self centered.