Ralph Ellison, Democracy, and American Vernacular Culture

I This review essay examines In the Shadow of Invisibility: Ralph Ellison and the Promise of American Democracy (2022), by Sterling Lecater Bland, Jr. Eschewing the more expressly political approaches taken by recent Ellison scholars, Bland shows how Ellison mines the resources of vernacular traditions-far more than those of politics or ideology-to explore the formation of national culture. This was true, according to Bland's first chapter, even during Ellison's leftist years of literary apprenticeship. Subsequent chapters take up Ellison's continued engagements with democracy and vernacular culture in his writings on jazz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Black Arts movement, as well as in his never-completed second novel.