I Don't Think The Riots Derailed The

The Genius Is Making A Way Out Of No Way.

I Knew That There Were Black People In Africa, Of Course, Unfortunately Because Of Movies Such As 'tarzan.'

Arnold Rampersad's Stunningly Revealing Biography Has, At Long Last, Unveiled-in Magisterial Prose-the Very Complex And Vulnerable Man Behind Ralph Ellison's Own Masks And Myths. One Of The Nation's Most Brilliant Writers Emerges As All The More Fascinating Precisely Because He Was So Very Human. Painstakingly Researched And Compellingly Written, Ralph Ellison Is A Masterwork Of The Genre Of Literary Biography.

My Father, If Anything, First And Last, Was A Man Of Words. He Loved Stories; He Didn't Live For Stories, Exactly, But I Think He Lived Through Stories. I Think, Like Many Writers, He Loved Stories About Things He Had Experienced As Much As, If Not More Than, He Loved The Experiences Themselves.

The First Slave Came To Florida In 1526. The First One We Know By Name, Esteban, Which Means Stephen, Came A Couple Of Years Later. So, We Start With The Stories Of Juan Garrido And Esteban To Show That African-american People Have Been Here A Century Longer Than Anyone Thought, And That The Diversity We See In The African-american Community Today Has Existed Since The Beginning.