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Juneteenth

Ralph Ellison,

Charles R. Johnson (Goodreads Author) (Preface by)

3.63 · Rating details · 1,440 ratings · 173 reviews

From the author of bestselling Invisible Man--the classic novel of African-American experience--this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.

Tell me what happened while there's still time, demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itin ...more

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Paperback, 400 pages

Published June 13th 2000 by Vintage (first published May 29th 1999)

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Jun 29, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: merkins, penguin-classics, novels

My rule with unfinished or abandoned novels is to leave them festering lonesome on shelves as embarrassing reminders of a writer’s all-too-human faffiness—Gogol’s Dead Souls II serving as the ur-example of what happens when an author fails to follow up a masterpiece and loses his sanity and reputation in the process. Whether Ellison lost his sanity trying to complete his Untitled Second Novel is unclear—forty years trying to follow up one of the Great American Novels Invisible Man suggests a lac ...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Ben rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit, favorites

I don't listen to country music so forgive my inability to properly reference this song; a song I abhor. I have seen the music video though. The guitar-slinging singer hops out of his Chevy pickup wearing a baseball cap and mechanics shirt singing about all the characteristics of a "real" American. As I watched this video, as a man whose head remains too large for donning baseball caps and drives a small sedan, I felt entirely un-American. And enraged. His depiction undoubtedly represents some A I don't listen to country music so forgive my inability to properly reference this song; a song I abhor. I have seen the music video though. The guitar-slinging singer hops out of his Chevy pickup wearing a baseball cap and mechanics shirt singing about all the characteristics of a "real" American. As I watched this video, as a man whose head remains too large for donning baseball caps and drives a small sedan, I felt entirely un-American. And enraged. His depiction undoubtedly represents some Americans but not nearly all of them. His arrogance infuriated me. Yet there he sang, describing an easy-to-swallow, why-would-you-want-to-be-anything-different, if-you're-not-like-me-than-leave but grotesquely inaccurate American identity - "a gaudy illusion".

As Ralph Ellison, again, blew my mind I embraced what I read as his master theme. He chose a passage from T.S. Eliot as his epigraph which dictates a theoretical function of memory; how it weaves itself into the construction of identity. As opposed to American Values and American Aspirations, the American Identity does not comfortably snuggle into one mold.

At times stylistically reminiscent of Hemingway, but with an expanded vocabulary, and Joyce, but with effective rule-breaking, Ellison constructed a text, though partial, resounding with a grandeur equal to the message he conveys. While reading I felt a sense of nostalgia even though no event or semantic frequency made direct reference to any personal experience of mine. The text itself seemed to touch something universally interlaced through the human psyche; a buried consciousness and Ellison alone knew the language. By telling the story through jazz, sermons, revivals, conversations, speeches, and films, Ellison maps a plot of the mind; each event a memory layered by perspectives from both Hickman and Bliss.

As opposed to Bliss, Hickman embraces his past. He wrestles with it, of course, continuously questioning how it could have led to the realization of a good man. But Bliss ignores his on the grounds of his unknown origin. He experiences a moment which annihilates his innocence but instead of embracing the event as a catalyst for his growth and betterment, he runs away to make himself the way he envisions rather than evolving with the circumstances of his history under grace and integrity. Hickman needed humbling, yet he allowed it because of his decency. Bliss seems to erase his character in order to make space for a new one. I don't blame Bliss. Perhaps living a life ignorant of one's origins excuses such desperate groping for identity. However, regardless of blame, consequences persist. Perhaps Bliss ought to have embraced his upbringing and allowed his character to process that past appropriately. Yet the question still remains: without a history, what kind of confidence can one have in their character? Is it truly their character? As America chooses to selectively remember its history - looking forward to the identity it can create autonomous of history - how can we be sure of who we are?

Some might commend our ability to reinvent ourselves, to look forward to shaping our national identity. But if we always look forward, are we ever doing it? If we don't remember what shaped us, will we ever be there? And if we do not shape or remember shaping our identity, will we ever have character?

Ellison called Emancipation a gaudy illusion. Of course, it legally abolished slavery but as a nation we still haven't tasted true liberty. Our petty differences, our defiance against our actual character, leave us clinging to the gates of our cells. If we don't allow the successes and mistakes of our past to shape us, we will always run from them. They will always control and dictate our running like a treadmill in a jail cell. Our choices will never originate with liberty and one unified ambition but with a dictatorial order from our fear and hatred.

Abolish "the gaudy illusion" and allow our memories to shape our national identity; allow our character to venture through the purifying fires of history and grow stronger together. Look ahead from atop building blocks of the past, not from the survey lines on the ground. Embrace liberty by uniting and moving toward a future for our country rather than for a country-song idea void of any reality. Without blame, no fingers stabbing through the air, but with reason and insight into the heart of the void experienced by all Americans, Ellison compels us to forge ahead together with a shared American identity, to envision that better future for who we are rather than who our prejudices and fears dictate us to be. With Juneteenth came the freedom to pursue freedom.

Remember that. ...more

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Nov 10, 2008 Rachel rated it really liked it

Wow.

One reading while breastfeeding is not going to cut it with this book. Talk about layers.

I feel the need to read lots of scholarship about this book, but not right now.

Does it bother you when you read a book that describes someone as a "great" something but gives no evidence of their being "great"? Well, this book delivers in that department. It's about a preacher and a politician and boy is it packed with prime examples of preaching and politicking (especially the former).

I wonder what the ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Never Without a Book rated it really liked it

This was more of a 3.5 star for me.

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Nov 28, 2013 GoldGato rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, fiction, summer

How does one follow up a masterpiece? Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is, in my humble say-so, one of the greatest works of fiction ever written. Genius. Perhaps Ellison should have stopped there, but he spent decades trying to put together his second novel. When he died in 1994, this still-not-published work was found to be more than 2,000 pages long without any clear conclusion or pathway. In an effort to get something out there, editor John Callahan had Juneteenth published, although this novel ...more

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Jul 03, 2020 Eric rated it really liked it

I rate this 4.5. It took me longer than I wanted to finish this book. While reading it, I knew I would get more out of this upon subsequent readings. It's a rich, and highly textured novel. Ellison was at the height of his novelistic craft, and attacked the construction of the American racial caste system with philosophical tenacity.

What's impressive is that this is a novel-in-progress edited into a reader's edition by literary scholar John F. Callahan. Callahan's introduction and afterword are I rate this 4.5. It took me longer than I wanted to finish this book. While reading it, I knew I would get more out of this upon subsequent readings. It's a rich, and highly textured novel. Ellison was at the height of his novelistic craft, and attacked the construction of the American racial caste system with philosophical tenacity.

What's impressive is that this is a novel-in-progress edited into a reader's edition by literary scholar John F. Callahan. Callahan's introduction and afterword are intriguing in and of themselves giving the reader insight into what he could discern from Ellison's unfinished manuscript and copious notes on the work. In addition, Charles Johnson's Introduction is stirring and fitting. Readers of Ellison can only wish how he would have completed this work; it's also interesting that he never finished this work that he started soon after Invisible Man. According to Callahan, the book was basically a complete novel by the early 1970s, but he continued to revise until the mid 1980s. For those of us who write, whether works of fiction like Ellison or works of non-fiction like me, what will we leave behind that's unfinished?

As mentioned, the book is a stirring treatment of race in America much more so than Invisible Man. The setting is right at mid-century just before the Modern Civil Rights period. Though Ellison worked in this novel for 40 years he never shifted the setting. It is also a book about historical consciousness. What do Americans choose to remember about their history? How does history continue impact the present? I'm not going to enter a discussion on this here for fear of spoiling the reading of future readers. What I will say here is that the book is full of African American idioms and cadences that are funny and endearing. Ellison's grasp on African American life and culture comes shinning through in all of its folksiness including a strong emphasis on African American Christian culture.

Lastly, Ellison was prescient about how American politics is inherently a race game. He also saw how this game could end for racist whites reminiscent of Morrison's creation of the Seven Days in Song of Solomon. Thank goodness this novel in this form exists. Without the work of Callahan editing, American literature would have been without such a relevant novel that speaks to the problem of race in America. ...more

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Jul 28, 2010 Djrmel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

How do you judge a book that was unfinished at the time it was taken over by the editor? A book that was 40 years in the making, likely to have been published as three books if the author had finished it before he passed away? Do you judge it as a work in progress, a sketch book piece from the creaters of one of Western Literatures masterpieces? After all, Elisson never handed this book to his publisher and said "It is done". It seems unfair to judge it as a finished work bearing Ellison's name, ...more

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Sep 22, 2007 kerry rated it it was amazing

Adore this book. I found that, despite its strange construction as a book, Juneteenth stands on its own as a masterpiece of American lit... and knowing Ellison's history and the toil that went into its writing only adds to the book's classicness.

Juneteenth is one small excerpt of Ellison's 2000+ manuscript after the Invisible Man. Ellison spent years on the follow-up story, enduring a '66 fire that burned the initial manuscript, and tearing through writing and re-writing Juneteenth for the rest ...more

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Jun 18, 2020 Paul Haspel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: juneteenth, african-americans

Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates the true and final end of slavery in the United States, provides the title and the thematic centerpiece for Ralph Ellison’s second and final novel – a brilliant affirmation of human community, and a work that many of the admirers of this great American writer thought would never see the light of day.

Ellison, of course, needs no introduction for any student of American literature, or of great literature generally. Born in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ellison made ...more

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Feb 03, 2018 Anna Groover rated it it was amazing

Shelves: for-class, religion, 2018

In the notes at the end of Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison's editor includes this musing from Ellison: "Was it perversity, or was it that the structure of power demanded that anyone acting out the role would do so in essentially the same way?"

I think this is a great framing of the question at the heart of Juneteenth, a novel about a white boy raised by a black preacher to become a preacher as well who runs away from that life and becomes a race-baiting senator in the pre-Civil Rights Era period. Ellis ...more

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Jun 19, 2008 Jesus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: freeing your mind & your body

Shelves: historiography

I was surprised to find that slavery still existed in America even after the death of so many of our young countrymen in a divisive though ultimately decisive war. The title of this work derives from the day in the middle of June a town in the state of Texas finally complied with what had become federal law & formally ended the practice of slavery. The too-long-delayed celebration of newly-freed individuals becomes a backdrop for understanding contemporary politics.

The other reviewers suggest th ...more

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Jun 22, 2015 Jackie rated it liked it

Shelves: audio

The audio version is narrated very well by Joe Morton but Ellison is a complex writer and I think some sections just have to be read and digested, like the Senate speech and the sermons. I'm going to get a hard copy so I can fully appreciate it. ...more

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Aug 17, 2020 Kim Williams rated it it was amazing

A beautifully written, but unfinished novel, Juneteenth left me wanting more. The language of this book ranges from soaring religious rhetoric to a wonderfully staccato poetry reminiscent of jazz scatting. The story is told somewhat in reverse, using the dueling flashbacks of the two main characters. We gradually learn the story of how Bliss, shot and at death's door in the beginning of this novel, went from child preacher raised by the black preacher Hickman to a race-baiting Senator. Many ques ...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Pat rated it really liked it

Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison's posthumous follow-up to Invisible Man. It's about a senator, Bliss, who is shot on the senate floor, and the African-American man, Hickman, who raised him. It's also about identity and how the way we identify ourselves affects our actions and how we treat others. Despite having been raised by African-Americans, Bliss grows up to become a racist, white senator. Once he decides to be white, this influences the future actions of his life, which leads to the assassinati ...more

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Jan 15, 2015 David Alexander rated it it was amazing

Ralph Ellison was an American writer of powerful intensity. I found Juneteenth, like The Invisible Man, pleasingly absorbing, and, indeed, gripping, and a rare thing, a religious modern novel that depicts a good black preacher, "Daddy" Hickman, with a compelling Christian faith, and a compelling account of his conversion. Ellison's depiction of black community with dynamic realism, capturing as it does the pith and vinegar and goodness and life and peril of the people, and illuminating from the ...more

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Dec 06, 2014 Jennifer W rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books

Too twisty and stream of consciousness for me. very few real plot points, hard to follow at times. I know this was an editor's work of unfinished notes and whatnot, and maybe I would have liked the whole more, but as it stands, I wasn't that impressed. ...more

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Jul 04, 2020 Trevor Seigler rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recently I read "The Castle," a work published only after the death of its author, Franz Kafka. Similarly, "Juneteenth," the second (and much delayed) novel by Ralph Ellison, was only published after his death in 1994, coming out five years later. I tend to be on guard about anything published posthumously, because the author or authors are no longer around to let me or any other reader know if the final work was what they intended. Kafka infamously told his buddy Max Brod to "burn" all his manu Recently I read "The Castle," a work published only after the death of its author, Franz Kafka. Similarly, "Juneteenth," the second (and much delayed) novel by Ralph Ellison, was only published after his death in 1994, coming out five years later. I tend to be on guard about anything published posthumously, because the author or authors are no longer around to let me or any other reader know if the final work was what they intended. Kafka infamously told his buddy Max Brod to "burn" all his manuscripts, knowing full well (according to James Hawes) that Brod would do no such thing; he'd gather them together, perhaps punch them up a bit, and bring them out to the world. Similarly, Ellison's second novel was put together in part by his widow and by an author and editor close to Ellison. The subsequent novel is itself part of a larger intended work, a possible multi-volume look at American history especially in terms of race and meaning. That this work is what is available so far means that we must deal with it on its own terms, while keeping in mind the long gestation period and possible multiple directions this very narrative might have taken if Ellison had finished the work or if he had intended it to be published as part of a larger work, instead of as a standalone novel.

With all that being said, taken on its own merits "Juneteenth" is a complex, intoxicating, frustrating look at America as only someone of Ellison's caliber could render it. The story is centered around two different men whose deep, lifelong connection is only revealed once one of them (a segregationist senator) is shot on the floor of the United States Senate. The other man, an African-American preacher, literally birthed the senator and helped to raise him, including him in his revivals as a young "junior preacher" in his own right. Now Senator Sunraider, the boy first knew life as Reverend Bliss, and his "father" was Daddy Hickman, the black preacher. As he lies slowly dying on a hospital bed from his wounds, the senator finds his mind going back into their shared past, and trying to surmise what drove them apart.

What is frustrating about this novel is how much of it remains not on the page, i.e., what Ellison intended versus what we have. I began this review by mentioning Kafka's "The Castle," also published posthumously and literally unfinished at the time of his death (it stops in the middle of a sentence). We'll never know what either man intended their works to be, but it can be gleaned from reading that K. (the main guy in "The Castle") will never really be welcome in the village, much less the titular castle where he was to be received. With "Juneteenth," it's harder to tell what the overall thrust of the narrative was to be; we go in sure that Senator Sunraider will die, and that Daddy Hickman will be at his bedside when that occurs. Whether the shared memories lead to a reconciliation between the two is harder to discern. But, then again, it speaks to the way that America is, in Ellison's time and ours, that any easy thoughts of reconciliation must be hard to find. Where Ellison intended the book to end, and even whether this was merely the end of one story or the beginning of another, the work as a standalone novel still ultimately works because it is, at its heart, a story of how important black is to white in this country (something that we've never been able to admit, even in our most liberal and open-minded white histories of this country). Maybe that's the power of this unfinished second novel; "Invisible Man" ends similarly on a note of waiting for the ways of fortune to change, and so does this novel. Maybe that's the point: there is no ending to the long story of race in America. ...more

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Jul 03, 2020 tortoise dreams rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A racist senator relates his life to the black preacher who raised him in this slice of an uncompleted historical epic about color in America.

Book Review: Juneteenth is the great unfinished book that makes Ralph Ellison (1913-94) one of that elite group of great novelists who published just one novel: Emily Bronte, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and (irony of ironies) Margaret Mitchell. Ordinarily I don't read unfinished novels published after the author's death (such as The Last Tycoon or Go Set a A racist senator relates his life to the black preacher who raised him in this slice of an uncompleted historical epic about color in America.

Book Review: Juneteenth is the great unfinished book that makes Ralph Ellison (1913-94) one of that elite group of great novelists who published just one novel: Emily Bronte, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and (irony of ironies) Margaret Mitchell. Ordinarily I don't read unfinished novels published after the author's death (such as The Last Tycoon or Go Set a Watchman). It seems unfair to the author and doesn't give the reader a full sense of the writer's intent or vision. Here I made an exception largely because of the recent holiday. I'm glad I did. Since Ralph Ellison didn't complete or publish this effort, I cannot fault him for any flaws in the work, but I can admire its many successes. Likewise I can't blame the editor (John F. Callahan), as I'm sure he did the best he could with a massive and chaotic archive. Ellison set out to follow his classic Invisible Man (1952) with what may've been a Faulknerian, multi-volume epic of African American history told through an authoritative and exhilarating use of the black oral tradition. A mythic mix of language and identity. The reasons for its failure to reach fruition are detailed in Callahan's thorough introduction. The bit we have, Juneteenth, is told through a Woolfian stream of consciousness: speeches, sermons, thoughts, delusions, and vernacular, intimate or contentious conversations. At times the constant inundation of words is overwhelming, without any phrase making an impact before being trampled on by seven other phrases following in quick succession. Too many notes, too many words, too hard to focus. Like drinking from a fire hose. There is no single narrative but scraps intermingled like bread crumbs along a trail that the reader tries desperately to track through interweaving streams of sensory overload. Monologue and dialogue meld. But when it does work, which is often enough, Ellison is brilliant. A flashback to a call-and-response church sermon given by the two main characters is overload in the best possible way, the history of African arrival to this country told in pure poetry slam perfection "We were born again in chains of steel. Yes, and chains of ignorance. And all we knew was the spirit of the Word. We had no schools. We owned no tools, no cabins, no churches, not even our own bodies." When it works there are moments of transcendence, as when a delegation of seniors from a black church congregate at the Lincoln Memorial and Ellison gives us a meditation upon that great and all-too-human martyr. As an unfinished work there is little narrative drive, little forward propulsion beyond the reader wondering about the moment of metamorphosis from what we're told happened to the painfully little we learn about what is. There is no real beginning, middle, and end -- we enter in the middle of the conversation. The basic story rests heavily on the two central characters: a white, race-baiting U.S. Senator and the black tent-show preacher who raised him. The whole swirls around Juneteenth, that happy commemoration of the resurrection that we call Emancipation, that overdue proclamation broken by conciliation and compromise: "A bunch of old-fashioned Negroes celebrating an illusion of emancipation." That great moment as unfinished as this book. But somewhere in the 40 years of writing in the wilderness that arrived at Juneteenth, Ellison strikes gold often enough that readers can see the vision he had for it, even as we can see Lincoln's vision, even if neither has been realized or perfected. There's so much here of violence, and pain, and injustice that still rings relevant today: "Why can't they realize that when they dull their senses to the killing of one group of men they dull themselves to the preciousness of all human life?" For the historians, Callahan apparently assembled Juneteenth from Book II of what may have been a possible three volume sequence within Ellison's greater reservoir of notes, disks, and typescripts. In 2010, Callahan published a longer version of this novel, over a thousand pages, as Three Days Before the Shooting. I've not seen a copy and this version, however truncated, is enough for me. As incomplete, fragmented, limited, and unblessed by the author as this may be, the many pieces still unite to speak of matters we need to hear. [4★] ...more

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Aug 13, 2017 Jason Das rated it really liked it · review of another edition

If you like Ralph Ellison’s writing and worldview as much as I do, you should definitely read this. It’s a fever dream of the USA in the first half of the 20th Century, reveling in explorations of sexuality, politics, race, religion, pop culture, childhood, identity, memory, and nature. It veers between extreme naturalism and allegorical farce. (I think it might be what they call "modernism" (DH Lawrence, James Joyce, WG Sebold) but I never studied literature that way so I dunno?)

Like some othe If you like Ralph Ellison’s writing and worldview as much as I do, you should definitely read this. It’s a fever dream of the USA in the first half of the 20th Century, reveling in explorations of sexuality, politics, race, religion, pop culture, childhood, identity, memory, and nature. It veers between extreme naturalism and allegorical farce. (I think it might be what they call "modernism" (DH Lawrence, James Joyce, WG Sebold) but I never studied literature that way so I dunno?)

Like some other work of Ellison’s it vividly demonstrates the ridiculousness of powerful institutions and traditions, but also their value and utility; that it's all bullshit but it's also all so important. And like Invisible Man, it’s as much the story of some messed-up individuals’ identity journeys as it is about “race” or “America”.

But be prepared for a very bumpy ride. It took me 8 months to read, and it’s not a very long book; nor am I a particularly slow reader. (Big thanks to the Brooklyn Public Library for their liberal renewal policy.)

Some of the slowness was fine and good. There’s some deeply polished writing here, with a lot to savor in each phrase. And quite a lot of the book is speech (whether inner or outer) and seems almost made to be read aloud. I often had to slow down my reading to speaking speed. I even read some of it aloud (at home, alone), and that really worked. If I “read” it again, I might try the audiobook.

While it’s often unclear exactly what's happening in the narrative, the telling is beautiful and powerful. At a certain point, I stopped trying to make all the pieces add up and just let it wash over me. Clarity may be possible here, but it’s perhaps not worth the labor. It doesn’t feel quite right to call it stream of consciousness though, because each sentence seems so carefully constructed.

The big problem is that, as a novel, it’s a disaster. The whole is significantly less than the sum of the parts. I have trouble believing that this is the best book that could be decocted from the raw materials. (Though I haven't tried to read Three Days Before the Shooting yet.) Nearly all the parts are good, and many are jaw-droppingly amazing. But the assemblage is a mess. Disjointed, uneven, poorly sectioned and distributed, and just a burden to wade through. I really wish it wasn’t half in italics, that quote marks were deployed more often, that chapter and section breaks were more frequent. Maybe even invasively signpost it bit (e.g. “at this point, we assume the author intended a lengthy story about X, which takes us from what you just read to the next part”). Basically the editing is abysmal, and makes this book a burden and a chore. ...more

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Jul 17, 2020 Martin rated it really liked it

First, I want to say that I am not one of these white people who had never heard of the holiday/celebration of Juneteenth until 2020 following the Black Lives Matter protests. Every year I figured I should start reading this in May and finish by June 19th, and then June would roll around and I realized I had forgotten. I started reading it this year at the end of April, figuring I'd have plenty of time. But lo and behold, I didn't finish it until July, after SO MUCH had happened in our country.

T First, I want to say that I am not one of these white people who had never heard of the holiday/celebration of Juneteenth until 2020 following the Black Lives Matter protests. Every year I figured I should start reading this in May and finish by June 19th, and then June would roll around and I realized I had forgotten. I started reading it this year at the end of April, figuring I'd have plenty of time. But lo and behold, I didn't finish it until July, after SO MUCH had happened in our country.

This book could not be more relevant to our times. Much of it is set in Oklahoma, which Ellison felt held the promise and the tragedy of the American Dream (relocated Native Americans, Tulsa 1921, the Land Rush, Dust Bowl, Bible Belt, rich in oil and potential for climatological disaster). A place that is actually very diverse but whose voice has been exceedingly white, standing in for the greater nation that has such difficulty in acknowledging that it has always been diverse, which rewards people with money and power when they allow themselves to forget history. There is commentary about how the southerners in power are always able to play their knowledge of prejudice and coercion against the disinterest of the northerners. And how the black electorate has given leeway to political machines that have shown the slightest promise of any interest in its plight.

The novel was unfinished; Ellison wrote it for decades. "Juneteenth" is a smaller assemblage from 1999, an attempt at a focused work. There is a longer version published in 2010 titled "Three Days Before the Shooting..." but I think "Juneteenth" was as much as I could grasp. I don't know how Ellison could have ever finished the novel, as it grapples with issues that do not seem resolvable. What we're left with is pure writing, which is great in its beauty and fury. Below is a quotation that I feel is relevant to what was going on in the U.S. while I was deep in this book:

"Do you think a man like me is even interested in the idea of trying to be Christlike? Hell, my papa was a preacher while I’m a horn-blowing gambler. Do you think that after being the son of a black
preacher in this swamp of a country I’d let you put me in the position of trying to act like Christ? Make it easy for you, to destroy mine and me without even the need to remember? And humiliate mine and me and [...] expect me to understand and forgive you and then minister to your needs? Destroy me and mine so that you can cast me down into corruption and the grave and then dig me up next week so that I can serve you? Tell me, what kind of endless, bottomless blind store forgiveness and understanding am I supposed to have? Just tell me where I'm supposed to carry it! What kind of meat and bread am I supposed to eat to nourish it?" ...more

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Apr 03, 2019 Chrissie marked it as maybe

Shelves: southern, usa, religion, hf, race, audible-uk

Do I dare read this book, published after the author's death?

*****************************

Invisible Man 2 stars when read for a second time. Much better first time around. Now it is dated.. ...more

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Feb 10, 2021 Harriett Milnes rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: african-american, 4-star-books

This novel was put together after Ellison's death from more than a thousand pages of notes he had left. There were 2 sections that were brilliant, conveying a overwhelming chaotic vision: the section at the beginning about the Senator's speech in Congress and the shooting, and the section at the revival towards the end. Memorable characters, in a setting from 1950s America. ...more

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Jun 29, 2020 Coleman Erika rated it liked it

I truly believe this book was too deep of a book for me to understand. I was able to grasp the issue of race, but something may have just gone over my head.

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Jul 13, 2013 Susan Emmet rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Juneteenth..."the celebration of a gaudy illusion," regarding Emancipation. And Lord knows Ellison's forty-year effort to complete this novel needed adept assistance from a good editor, John F. Callahan, Ellison's literary executor. But it's no "gaudy illusion."
It's a wonderful, entrapping book, full of sermons and dreams and music and history and folktale and layers of dialog and plot and theme. Just an amazing work pared down from 2000 pages of text Ellison left, along with boxes of notes.
By Juneteenth..."the celebration of a gaudy illusion," regarding Emancipation. And Lord knows Ellison's forty-year effort to complete this novel needed adept assistance from a good editor, John F. Callahan, Ellison's literary executor. But it's no "gaudy illusion."
It's a wonderful, entrapping book, full of sermons and dreams and music and history and folktale and layers of dialog and plot and theme. Just an amazing work pared down from 2000 pages of text Ellison left, along with boxes of notes.
By the way, the short Notes section at the end (not meant for scholars - that's another edition) is helpful as are Callahan's final words about his method of culling and including.
As with "Invisible Man," I found myself going back and forth in my reading, looking back to track and connect passages. I didn't find that hard, but necessary because it captures the rhythm of the novel. A jazz rhythm and melody.
Reverend Alonzo Hickman, Pastor and Musician Extraordinaire, raises Bliss, the supposed orphan boy of light skin, to be a pastor, even closing him in a casket during revivals in order to let him be reborn. Bliss takes off thrice in order to escape and eventually become Senator Adam Sunraider, he of penultimate racism. Hickman comes to Bliss in his hospital room as Bliss lays dying of a assassin's bullet.
This is Hickman's story; this is Bliss' story. It is the story of a deep-seated need to find common humanity amid all the horror "we" inflict on each other in the name of race or religion or politics.
Hickman says,"Keep, keep, keep to the rhythm and you won't get weary...you won't get lost. We're handicapped! Because the Lord wants us strong. We started out with nothing but The Word - just like the others, but they've forgotten it...We learned patience and to understand Job. Of all the animals, man's the only one not born knowing almost everything he'll ever know...We learned that all blessings come mixed with sorrow and all hardships have a streak of laughter...We learn to bounce back and to disregard the prizes of fools. And we must keep on learning."
See the little in order to see the big. Don't give up. It's not all a gaudy illusion.
...more

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Jun 10, 2011 James Klagge rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: african-american, novels

This book was excerpted from a massive novel project that remained unfinished at the author's death. So it is unclear whether the flaws derive from the project itself or from its unfinished state. A much larger edition of the project was recently published as "Three Days Before the Shooting". Perhaps the larger edition answers the many unanswered questions that hang mysteriously in "Juneteenth". I don't know. I read this in the middle of June because that is when Juneteenth falls. There is a mar ...more

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Oct 11, 2015 Lora Shouse rated it liked it · review of another edition

It’s a shame Ralph Ellison never was able to finish his second novel. In this edition, editor John Callahan tells the story of how he was working on it for years and years, and just when he had it nearly finished, the manuscript, or at least a large part of it, was destroyed in a fire. He went back to working on it, but was never able to get it to that point again. Working with it after Ellison’s death, Callahan determined that the existing material could likely have become three novels, but non ...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Noelle M rated it it was ok · review of another edition

After I closed the book it took me time to digest the story. The story is about a racially prejudiced white U.S. senator who was abandoned at his illegitimate birth, and reared by a black minister named Alonzo Hickman whose pulpit style was religion as spectacle--in which he schooled the boy. OR the story may be about a black minister named Alonzo Hickman who reared an abandoned white waif who turned into a political con able to backstab anyone in his climb to the top. The tale alternates points ...more

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Jun 20, 2015 Christopher rated it liked it · review of another edition

Rating/review based on enjoyment alone. I was in WAY over my head with this one.

A dizzying, frustrating, rhythmic, sprawling, uneven, lyrical, byzantine, and, at many points, glorious free-form(? stream-of-consciousness? mediation? riffing? experiment in surreal post-modernist socio-political commentary?) on the whole of America. I struggled through this one, with a feeling of it being over my head. [I've since read the editor's notes and a little background that I wish I would have read first ...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Alain rated it liked it

Recommends it for: dedicated

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison was a book with great voice and a good example of good writing. I've not read the Invisible Man so I cannot judge on his previous work. After reading this book though I can say that the book was not that hard to understand as far as reading but the story itself/the set up was very confusing at times. The book does say its an edited compilation of Ellision work and it does show at parts sometimes to much. At times to story sort of just skip and goes somewhere else. Thi ...more

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May 17, 2009 Me added it

Seriously intended to fall in love with this book beyond personal facades of intellectual bouts, it fell down pretty damn hard.

1. I adore African American History- I rather enjoy the pungent negativity surrounding it, clearly masking glorious beauty, and resilience levels so high in terms of all aspects.

2. My ideas of emancipation and American History isn't so whole hearted.

3. For someone who doesn't give a slight kilowatt too tension or any level of connection and stimulation of the mind, this ...more

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About Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison

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Ralph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the b ...more

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“Words of Emancipation didn't arrive until the middle of June so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. The celebration of a gaudy illusion.” — 16 likes

“God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.” — 16 likes

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