Overview
From the author of the classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth is a powerful and brilliantly crafted tale that explores themes of identity, race, and ambition. "[A] stunning achievement. . . . Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Time The story follows Adam Sunraider, a race-baiting senator, whose life takes an unexpected turn when he calls for Alonzo Hickman, an old Black minister, to be by his side as he faces a mortal wound. As the two men intimately share their stories and memories, the true shape and substance of the past begin to emerge. Here is Ellison, a virtuoso of American vernacular--the preacher's hyperbole and the politician's rhetoric, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a moving, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. With an introduction and additional notes by John F. Callahan, who first compiled Juneteenth out of thousands of manuscript pages in 1999, and a preface by National Book Award-winning author Charles R. Johnson.
"Beautifully written and imaginatively conceived, Juneteenth, like Invisible Man, deserves to be read and reread by generations." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780593314616
- ISBN-10: 0593314611
- Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publish Date: May 2021
- Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.6 pounds
- Page Count: 416
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