Juneteenth | Essays and Criticism

  • Critical Essay on Juneteenth

    Martinelli is a Seattle-based freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Martinelli examines the effects of race—as personified by the opposing characteristics of Bliss Hickman and his adult self, Senator Adam Sunraider—on religion and America during the decades prior to the Civil Rights movement.

  • The Structure of Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth

    In the following essay excerpt, Butler examines the narrative structure of Juneteenth, positing that critics who find the novel too “loosely connected” misinterpret the way the structure is “inspired by musical techniques rather than conventional narrative plotting.”

  • Ralph Ellison and the American Canon

    In the following essay excerpt, Nadel considers Juneteenth a version of “Ellison’s America,” in which Ellison tries to reconcile the American psyche with the repressed “sin of American racial pride.”