Ellison, Ralph [Waldo]
Ellison, Ralph [Waldo]( 1914–94),Oklahoma-born author, a student at Tuskegee Institute (1933–36), was a visiting professor of creative writing, black culture, and humanities at various major universities, but is best known for his naturalistic novel, Invisible Man (1952), winner of a National Book Award, tracing the life of a young black man trying to find himself as an individual as well as in relation to his race and society. It remains a major novel. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), essays, and Going to the Territory (1986), a later collection. Ellison had completed a portion of a second novel which was destroyed in a fire. He started again from scratch and was about to finish it at his death.
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