![]() B-b-but after he-e-e-ar ing you tonight I f-f-f eel like I j-j-ju- ust hear-r- rd J-j-je- sus C-c-ch-r-r-r ist d-d-d-runk on Thunderbird Wine!” And if you laugh along with him, and if you watch Ellison’s eyes as you laugh, you will realize that he is only testing a deep scar to see if it has healed.Įllison’s difficulty, one cause of all the cuts, is that matter of self-definition. E-i-li-s-s-s- on, I r-r ead your b-b-o ok The Inv-v-v-si-b-b- ble M-m- man. If you ask him about the Tougaloo experience, Ellison will laugh and then tell an anecdote about the stuttering black student who said: “Mr. “I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “He spoke at Tougaloo last year,” a black exchange student at Santa Cruz told me. But I also recognize that if I ran down and waved my arms and shouted to them, “Did you know that Ralph Ellison watches you playing every afternoon?” they would continue to shoot at the basket and answer, “Who is Ralph Ellison?” Perhaps future sociologists will say that they possess superior athletic abilities because of biological advantages peculiar to blacks but perhaps by then each of these black boys will have gained enough sense of who he is to reply, “I’m good at what I do because I practiced it all my life.” The encouragement of this sort of self-definition has become almost a crusade with Ellison. I look down and recognize the hope of at least two major teams, ten years hence, developing. “I watch them every afternoon,” he says, and offers the binoculars to me. Across the street, in the long strip of green park which parallels the Hudson River, two black boys are playing basketball. Got any questions or requests? Feel free to message the moderators.RALPH Ellison, a pair of high-powered binoculars close to his eyes, sits by the window of his eighth-floor Riverside Drive apartment looking down.
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