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Juneteenth
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"[A]n extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall."--"Newsday"
From Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master. "From the Trade Paperback edition."
"[A]n extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall."--"Newsday"
From Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master. "From the Trade Paperback edition."
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First published May 29, 1999
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About the author
Ralph Ellison
90 books2,064 followersRalph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 310 reviews
March 20, 2025
this book is one of the great editorial achievements: 2,000 pages of incomplete and incohesive content winnowed down into one comparatively slim, comparatively consistent book.
but compared to the invisible man, one of the great writing achievements...i mean. how do you follow that up.
the various articles and essays about this work are fascinating and worth the read, but to boil it down, ellison had the same question. he began his second novel shortly after his first won every award ever, and then just...kept trying until his death 40 years later. in that time, he published excerpts, he pretended his progress was devastated in a fire, and he never finished a draft.
this has moments of true brilliance, and its existence is a marvel in and of itself, but there just isn't enough there there. many times i flipped back through pages, sure i'd missed something that wouldn't be found. much like ellison must have lamented, it just never quite came together like you felt it should.
bottom line: but i still recommend it.
3.5
but compared to the invisible man, one of the great writing achievements...i mean. how do you follow that up.
the various articles and essays about this work are fascinating and worth the read, but to boil it down, ellison had the same question. he began his second novel shortly after his first won every award ever, and then just...kept trying until his death 40 years later. in that time, he published excerpts, he pretended his progress was devastated in a fire, and he never finished a draft.
this has moments of true brilliance, and its existence is a marvel in and of itself, but there just isn't enough there there. many times i flipped back through pages, sure i'd missed something that wouldn't be found. much like ellison must have lamented, it just never quite came together like you felt it should.
bottom line: but i still recommend it.
3.5
June 30, 2013
My rule with unfinished or abandoned novels is to leave them festering lonesome on shelves as embarrassing reminders of a writer’s all-too-human faffiness—Gogol’s Dead Souls II serving as the ur-example of what happens when an author fails to follow up a masterpiece and loses his sanity and reputation in the process. Whether Ellison lost his sanity trying to complete his Untitled Second Novel is unclear—forty years trying to follow up one of the Great American Novels Invisible Man suggests a lack of coherence and confidence in his vision—but the posthumous papers on his desk attest to a Gogolian faff-up of towering proportions. The exception to my rule is when brave, passionate editors can cut-and-paste satisfying works from the mess—Michael Pietsch’s heroic work on DFW’s The Pale King being the obvious example—and John F. Callahan has whittled down the 2000+ pages into a slim and satisfying whole from various pre-published fragments and a longer excerpt to make Juneteenth. As a novel, the work is at its most powerful during Reverend Hickman’s oratorical rampages, and the POV makes use of radical shifts, from straight third-person to first-person merging with internal monologue, and the unusual dropping of speech marks during conversations to create a distance between the white senator Sunraider (raised by Hickman) and the Rev. The central storyline is the upbringing of Sunraider and his parentage, interspersed with all manner of fascinating episodes intended to form part of a MUCH larger saga on Black America in the early 20thC. The Modern Library released a longer attempt to sculpt the intended masterpiece in 2010 as Three Days Before the Shooting . . .
June 18, 2021
Juneteenth, the holiday that celebrates the true and final end of slavery in the United States, provides the title and the thematic centerpiece for Ralph Ellison’s second and final novel – a brilliant affirmation of human community, and a work that many of the admirers of this great American writer thought would never see the light of day.
Ellison, of course, needs no introduction for any student of American literature, or of great literature generally. Born in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ellison made a profound impression upon the literary scene of his day through the publication of his debut novel, Invisible Man (1952) – an epic work that changed the conversation regarding American racism in ways that were many and profound, and that won Ellison the National Book Award.
While Ellison produced many brilliant essays throughout his literary career, up until his death in 1994, he suffered a devastating setback when part of his manuscript for Juneteenth was destroyed in a fire in the 1960’s, and it seemed for many years as though the Juneteenth project for a prospective second novel would remain forever unfinished. But his friend, biographer, and literary executor John F. Callahan worked with thousands of manuscript pages, and built from Ellison’s own notes, to assemble Juneteenth as he believed Ellison would have wanted it to be; and when the novel was published in 1999, Ellison’s many admirers once again had the chance to savor this great author’s gifts for deft characterization, incisive social criticism, and mellifluous style.
Ellison’s Juneteenth begins with a scene of high drama at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.; a group of African-American parishioners arrive at the Senate chamber, led by their minister, Alonzo Hickman. Hickman, a perceptive critic of American society, says of himself and his congregation that “We’re from down where we’re among the counted but not among the heard” (p. 5).
Their task is an unpleasant one, for it involves listening to a speech by Senator Adam Sunraider, a New England-based senator with a predilection for racist rhetoric. Sunraider proceeds with his speech – “Words, ideas, phrases were jetting from some chaotic region deep within him and as he strove to regain control it was as though he had been taken over by some mocking ventriloquistic orator of opposing views, a trickster of corny philosophical ambition” (p. 14) – and indeed indulges, between patriotic clichés, in plenty of grotesque race-baiting. But in mid-speech, Sunraider is shot by a would-be assassin – in spite of Reverend Hickman’s efforts to prevent the shooting.
Hospitalized, and in danger of dying, Senator Sunraider will accept only one visitor – Reverend Hickman – for it turns out that the white racist politician and the African-American preacher have strong and deep ties. For Sunraider was originally Bliss, a child of indeterminate race raised by Reverend Hickman within the culture and traditions of the African-American faith community, and brought up to be a preacher himself – something that makes Bliss’s later transformation into “Senator Sunraider” all the more jarring.
And Ellison’s Juneteenth draws its title from one particularly crucial Juneteenth celebration during Bliss’s youth. The Juneteenth that is so crucial to the action of Ellison’s novel is something of which Reverend Hickman has to remind Senator Sunraider:
“Juneteenth,” the Senator said. “I had forgotten the word.”
“You’ve forgotten lots of important things from those days, Bliss.”
“I suppose so, but to learn some of the things I’ve learned I had to forget some others. Do you still call it ‘Juneteenth,’ Revern’ Hickman? Is it still celebrated?”
Hickman looked at him with widened eyes, leaning forward as he grasped the arms of the chair.
“Do we still? Why, I should say we do. You don’t think that because you left … Both, Bliss. Because we haven’t forgotten what it means. Even if sometimes folks try to make us believe it never happened or that it was a mistake that it ever did…”
“Juneteenth,” the Senator said, closing his eyes, his bandaged head resting beneath his hands. Word of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June, so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. (p. 114)
The Juneteenth holiday, as Reverend Hickman reminds Bliss/Sunraider and the reader, looks back to June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger, in his capacity as commander of the Military District of Texas, arrived at Galveston and read out General Order No. 3:
The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.
And thus – two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, four months after the U.S. Congress passed the 13th Amendment, and two months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox – the last enslaved people in the United States received the word that they were free.
As with everything else relating to race in America, the Juneteenth holiday is complicated. It celebrates the arrival of freedom in Texas, the final end of slavery in the United States, and the rejoicing among the African Americans of Galveston when they heard the news. But it also provides a reminder of how long-delayed that news of freedom was – and it also reminds us that the freedom of those millions of Americans should never have been in question at all, particularly in a country whose national anthem calls it “the land of the free.” And it further reminds us that the freedom that arrived at Galveston with General Granger and Order No. 3 has always been an imperfect, tentative, contingent kind of freedom – with one hundred years of segregation and state-sanctioned inequality following upon the original Juneteenth, and with problems of racism persisting to the present day.
The Juneteenth holiday, in its combination of joy and ambiguity, freedom and uncertainty, is thus a perfect setting for the precipitating incident in Ellison’s Juneteenth that causes young Bliss to begin doubting his identity. A white woman, known for erratic behavior, crashes a Juneteenth tent meeting where Bliss is assisting Reverend Hickman, grabs Bliss, and claims that Bliss is her son; and while the woman is prevented from kidnapping Bliss, the incident causes Bliss, an orphan who does not know his parents, to begin questioning his identity.
Reverend Hickman tries to provide guidance to the confused Bliss. After the incident at the Juneteenth meeting, Reverend Hickman offers Bliss advice that is likely to resonate with the reader:
“The first thing you have to understand is that this is a strange country. There’s no logic to it or to its ways. In fact, it’s been half-crazy from the beginning, and it’s got so many crazy crooks and turns and blind alleys in it that half the time a man can’t tell where he is or who he is. To tell the truth, Bliss, he can’t tell reason from unreason, and it’s so mixed up and confused that if we tried to straighten it out right this minute, half the folks out there running around would have to be locked up.” (p. 200)
Reverend Hickman adds that “the only logic and sanity is the logic and sanity of God, and down here it’s been turned wrong-side out and upside down. You have to watch yourself, Bliss, in a situation like this. Otherwise you won’t know what’s sense and what’s foolishness. Or what’s to be laughed at and what’s to be cried over. Or if you’re yourself or what somebody else says you are” (p. 200).
Reverend Hickman’s wise words notwithstanding, Bliss – like Joe Christmas from William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), an American Southerner haunted by a sense of uncertainty in terms of racial identity – eventually runs away from home; and after an interlude as a moviemaker, he eventually re-emerges as Senator Adam Sunraider. The first name “Adam” indicates Bliss’s determination to re-create himself as a new man whose racial identity will be certain and assured; the surname “Sunraider” seems almost like a parody of an aristocratically “white” last name, and recalls other hubris-ridden would-be raiders of the sun – from Icarus in classical mythology, to Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab who cried out, “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!”
For Reverend Hickman -- who raised Bliss as a son, in hopes that someone who could pass for white, but had been raised in African-American culture, could bridge the divisions of race in America – Bliss’s transformation into Sunraider is heartbreaking. But he always keeps track of his prodigal foster’s son’s career, and repeatedly tries to save Bliss – first by trying in vain to thwart the would-be assassin at the Capitol, and then, through his visits at Bliss’s hospital bed, trying to redeem the stricken Bliss from a race-driven view of life.
As the novel progresses, Hickman eventually reveals the shattering chain of events through which Bliss came into his life – one that involved profound and wrenching personal loss for Hickman himself – and presents himself with a troubling question: “Maybe it was the way the sacred decided to show Himself. Would you at this age still criticize God?” (p. 300)
I liked the direct manner in which Juneteenth engages the heritage of Oklahoma, Ellison’s home state. Oklahoma is a state that brings together Western and Southern cultural elements. As the former Indian Territory, it evokes with particular intensity the mingled pride and tragedy of this nation’s Native American heritage, and moreover it is “the Territory” toward which Huckleberry Finn says that he and his friend Jim must “light out” at the end of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), in order to preserve their interracial friendship and escape the encroaching corruption of American “civilization.” Ellison evokes all of those aspects of Oklahoma life with exceeding power in Juneteenth, and in those regards I enjoyed this novel even more than I enjoyed Invisible Man.
And then there is the sheer pleasure of reveling once again in Ellison’s gifts as a novelist. The voice of Juneteenth, and particularly of Reverend Hickman as the novel’s sometime narrator, brings together the improvisational quality of jazz music and the poetic cadences of the African-American gospel tradition – as, indeed, does the character of Reverend Hickman, a jazz musician turned gospel preacher.
Juneteenth also include a selection of notes on the novel, set down by Ellison himself over the decades-long process of its composition, as when Ellison writes that “This society is not likely to become free of racism, thus it is necessary for Negroes to free themselves by becoming their idea of what a free people should be” (p. 356).
This Juneteenth 2020 seems like a time of profound change. The death of George Floyd at the hands (or under the knee) of a Minneapolis police officer has resulted in ongoing nationwide and worldwide protests against racism – peaceful, multiracial protests in which people of all backgrounds are marching and organizing for peace, freedom, and equality. Monuments to defenders of slavery and colonialism are being taken down, across the nation and around the world. There is talk of making Juneteenth a national holiday. Perhaps – perhaps – there is some room for cautious optimism. I hope so.
One of the core themes of Juneteenth, I think, is that we are all part of each other – that all of us shall rise or fall together. The undeniable truth that Americans of all backgrounds have built the society and culture of the United States of America together is strongly emphasized throughout this great novel. Ellison’s Juneteenth is everything that I had hoped it would be, and is much, much more.
Ellison, of course, needs no introduction for any student of American literature, or of great literature generally. Born in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ellison made a profound impression upon the literary scene of his day through the publication of his debut novel, Invisible Man (1952) – an epic work that changed the conversation regarding American racism in ways that were many and profound, and that won Ellison the National Book Award.
While Ellison produced many brilliant essays throughout his literary career, up until his death in 1994, he suffered a devastating setback when part of his manuscript for Juneteenth was destroyed in a fire in the 1960’s, and it seemed for many years as though the Juneteenth project for a prospective second novel would remain forever unfinished. But his friend, biographer, and literary executor John F. Callahan worked with thousands of manuscript pages, and built from Ellison’s own notes, to assemble Juneteenth as he believed Ellison would have wanted it to be; and when the novel was published in 1999, Ellison’s many admirers once again had the chance to savor this great author’s gifts for deft characterization, incisive social criticism, and mellifluous style.
Ellison’s Juneteenth begins with a scene of high drama at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.; a group of African-American parishioners arrive at the Senate chamber, led by their minister, Alonzo Hickman. Hickman, a perceptive critic of American society, says of himself and his congregation that “We’re from down where we’re among the counted but not among the heard” (p. 5).
Their task is an unpleasant one, for it involves listening to a speech by Senator Adam Sunraider, a New England-based senator with a predilection for racist rhetoric. Sunraider proceeds with his speech – “Words, ideas, phrases were jetting from some chaotic region deep within him and as he strove to regain control it was as though he had been taken over by some mocking ventriloquistic orator of opposing views, a trickster of corny philosophical ambition” (p. 14) – and indeed indulges, between patriotic clichés, in plenty of grotesque race-baiting. But in mid-speech, Sunraider is shot by a would-be assassin – in spite of Reverend Hickman’s efforts to prevent the shooting.
Hospitalized, and in danger of dying, Senator Sunraider will accept only one visitor – Reverend Hickman – for it turns out that the white racist politician and the African-American preacher have strong and deep ties. For Sunraider was originally Bliss, a child of indeterminate race raised by Reverend Hickman within the culture and traditions of the African-American faith community, and brought up to be a preacher himself – something that makes Bliss’s later transformation into “Senator Sunraider” all the more jarring.
And Ellison’s Juneteenth draws its title from one particularly crucial Juneteenth celebration during Bliss’s youth. The Juneteenth that is so crucial to the action of Ellison’s novel is something of which Reverend Hickman has to remind Senator Sunraider:
“Juneteenth,” the Senator said. “I had forgotten the word.”
“You’ve forgotten lots of important things from those days, Bliss.”
“I suppose so, but to learn some of the things I’ve learned I had to forget some others. Do you still call it ‘Juneteenth,’ Revern’ Hickman? Is it still celebrated?”
Hickman looked at him with widened eyes, leaning forward as he grasped the arms of the chair.
“Do we still? Why, I should say we do. You don’t think that because you left … Both, Bliss. Because we haven’t forgotten what it means. Even if sometimes folks try to make us believe it never happened or that it was a mistake that it ever did…”
“Juneteenth,” the Senator said, closing his eyes, his bandaged head resting beneath his hands. Word of Emancipation didn’t arrive until the middle of June, so they called it Juneteenth. So that was it, the night of Juneteenth celebration, his mind went on. (p. 114)
The Juneteenth holiday, as Reverend Hickman reminds Bliss/Sunraider and the reader, looks back to June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger, in his capacity as commander of the Military District of Texas, arrived at Galveston and read out General Order No. 3:
The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection therefore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.
And thus – two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, four months after the U.S. Congress passed the 13th Amendment, and two months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox – the last enslaved people in the United States received the word that they were free.
As with everything else relating to race in America, the Juneteenth holiday is complicated. It celebrates the arrival of freedom in Texas, the final end of slavery in the United States, and the rejoicing among the African Americans of Galveston when they heard the news. But it also provides a reminder of how long-delayed that news of freedom was – and it also reminds us that the freedom of those millions of Americans should never have been in question at all, particularly in a country whose national anthem calls it “the land of the free.” And it further reminds us that the freedom that arrived at Galveston with General Granger and Order No. 3 has always been an imperfect, tentative, contingent kind of freedom – with one hundred years of segregation and state-sanctioned inequality following upon the original Juneteenth, and with problems of racism persisting to the present day.
The Juneteenth holiday, in its combination of joy and ambiguity, freedom and uncertainty, is thus a perfect setting for the precipitating incident in Ellison’s Juneteenth that causes young Bliss to begin doubting his identity. A white woman, known for erratic behavior, crashes a Juneteenth tent meeting where Bliss is assisting Reverend Hickman, grabs Bliss, and claims that Bliss is her son; and while the woman is prevented from kidnapping Bliss, the incident causes Bliss, an orphan who does not know his parents, to begin questioning his identity.
Reverend Hickman tries to provide guidance to the confused Bliss. After the incident at the Juneteenth meeting, Reverend Hickman offers Bliss advice that is likely to resonate with the reader:
“The first thing you have to understand is that this is a strange country. There’s no logic to it or to its ways. In fact, it’s been half-crazy from the beginning, and it’s got so many crazy crooks and turns and blind alleys in it that half the time a man can’t tell where he is or who he is. To tell the truth, Bliss, he can’t tell reason from unreason, and it’s so mixed up and confused that if we tried to straighten it out right this minute, half the folks out there running around would have to be locked up.” (p. 200)
Reverend Hickman adds that “the only logic and sanity is the logic and sanity of God, and down here it’s been turned wrong-side out and upside down. You have to watch yourself, Bliss, in a situation like this. Otherwise you won’t know what’s sense and what’s foolishness. Or what’s to be laughed at and what’s to be cried over. Or if you’re yourself or what somebody else says you are” (p. 200).
Reverend Hickman’s wise words notwithstanding, Bliss – like Joe Christmas from William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), an American Southerner haunted by a sense of uncertainty in terms of racial identity – eventually runs away from home; and after an interlude as a moviemaker, he eventually re-emerges as Senator Adam Sunraider. The first name “Adam” indicates Bliss’s determination to re-create himself as a new man whose racial identity will be certain and assured; the surname “Sunraider” seems almost like a parody of an aristocratically “white” last name, and recalls other hubris-ridden would-be raiders of the sun – from Icarus in classical mythology, to Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab who cried out, “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!”
For Reverend Hickman -- who raised Bliss as a son, in hopes that someone who could pass for white, but had been raised in African-American culture, could bridge the divisions of race in America – Bliss’s transformation into Sunraider is heartbreaking. But he always keeps track of his prodigal foster’s son’s career, and repeatedly tries to save Bliss – first by trying in vain to thwart the would-be assassin at the Capitol, and then, through his visits at Bliss’s hospital bed, trying to redeem the stricken Bliss from a race-driven view of life.
As the novel progresses, Hickman eventually reveals the shattering chain of events through which Bliss came into his life – one that involved profound and wrenching personal loss for Hickman himself – and presents himself with a troubling question: “Maybe it was the way the sacred decided to show Himself. Would you at this age still criticize God?” (p. 300)
I liked the direct manner in which Juneteenth engages the heritage of Oklahoma, Ellison’s home state. Oklahoma is a state that brings together Western and Southern cultural elements. As the former Indian Territory, it evokes with particular intensity the mingled pride and tragedy of this nation’s Native American heritage, and moreover it is “the Territory” toward which Huckleberry Finn says that he and his friend Jim must “light out” at the end of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), in order to preserve their interracial friendship and escape the encroaching corruption of American “civilization.” Ellison evokes all of those aspects of Oklahoma life with exceeding power in Juneteenth, and in those regards I enjoyed this novel even more than I enjoyed Invisible Man.
And then there is the sheer pleasure of reveling once again in Ellison’s gifts as a novelist. The voice of Juneteenth, and particularly of Reverend Hickman as the novel’s sometime narrator, brings together the improvisational quality of jazz music and the poetic cadences of the African-American gospel tradition – as, indeed, does the character of Reverend Hickman, a jazz musician turned gospel preacher.
Juneteenth also include a selection of notes on the novel, set down by Ellison himself over the decades-long process of its composition, as when Ellison writes that “This society is not likely to become free of racism, thus it is necessary for Negroes to free themselves by becoming their idea of what a free people should be” (p. 356).
This Juneteenth 2020 seems like a time of profound change. The death of George Floyd at the hands (or under the knee) of a Minneapolis police officer has resulted in ongoing nationwide and worldwide protests against racism – peaceful, multiracial protests in which people of all backgrounds are marching and organizing for peace, freedom, and equality. Monuments to defenders of slavery and colonialism are being taken down, across the nation and around the world. There is talk of making Juneteenth a national holiday. Perhaps – perhaps – there is some room for cautious optimism. I hope so.
One of the core themes of Juneteenth, I think, is that we are all part of each other – that all of us shall rise or fall together. The undeniable truth that Americans of all backgrounds have built the society and culture of the United States of America together is strongly emphasized throughout this great novel. Ellison’s Juneteenth is everything that I had hoped it would be, and is much, much more.
October 23, 2025
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I don't listen to country music so forgive my inability to properly reference this song; a song I abhor. I have seen the music video though. The guitar-slinging singer hops out of his Chevy pickup wearing a baseball cap and mechanics shirt singing about all the characteristics of a "real" American. As I watched this video, as a man whose head remains too large for donning baseball caps and drives a small sedan, I felt entirely un-American. And enraged. His depiction undoubtedly represents some Americans but not nearly all of them. His arrogance infuriated me. Yet there he sang, describing an easy-to-swallow, why-would-you-want-to-be-anything-different, if-you're-not-like-me-than-leave but grotesquely inaccurate American identity - "a gaudy illusion".
As Ralph Ellison, again, blew my mind I embraced what I read as his master theme. He chose a passage from T.S. Eliot as his epigraph which dictates a theoretical function of memory; how it weaves itself into the construction of identity. As opposed to American Values and American Aspirations, the American Identity does not comfortably snuggle into one mold.
At times stylistically reminiscent of Hemingway, but with an expanded vocabulary, and Joyce, but with effective rule-breaking, Ellison constructed a text, though partial, resounding with a grandeur equal to the message he conveys. While reading I felt a sense of nostalgia even though no event or semantic frequency made direct reference to any personal experience of mine. The text itself seemed to touch something universally interlaced through the human psyche; a buried consciousness and Ellison alone knew the language. By telling the story through jazz, sermons, revivals, conversations, speeches, and films, Ellison maps a plot of the mind; each event a memory layered by perspectives from both Hickman and Bliss.
As opposed to Bliss, Hickman embraces his past. He wrestles with it, of course, continuously questioning how it could have led to the realization of a good man. But Bliss ignores his on the grounds of his unknown origin. He experiences a moment which annihilates his innocence but instead of embracing the event as a catalyst for his growth and betterment, he runs away to make himself the way he envisions rather than evolving with the circumstances of his history under grace and integrity. Hickman needed humbling, yet he allowed it because of his decency. Bliss seems to erase his character in order to make space for a new one. I don't blame Bliss. Perhaps living a life ignorant of one's origins excuses such desperate groping for identity. However, regardless of blame, consequences persist. Perhaps Bliss ought to have embraced his upbringing and allowed his character to process that past appropriately. Yet the question still remains: without a history, what kind of confidence can one have in their character? Is it truly their character? As America chooses to selectively remember its history - looking forward to the identity it can create autonomous of history - how can we be sure of who we are?
Some might commend our ability to reinvent ourselves, to look forward to shaping our national identity. But if we always look forward, are we ever doing it? If we don't remember what shaped us, will we ever be there? And if we do not shape or remember shaping our identity, will we ever have character?
Ellison called Emancipation a gaudy illusion. Of course, it legally abolished slavery but as a nation we still haven't tasted true liberty. Our petty differences, our defiance against our actual character, leave us clinging to the gates of our cells. If we don't allow the successes and mistakes of our past to shape us, we will always run from them. They will always control and dictate our running like a treadmill in a jail cell. Our choices will never originate with liberty and one unified ambition but with a dictatorial order from our fear and hatred.
Abolish "the gaudy illusion" and allow our memories to shape our national identity; allow our character to venture through the purifying fires of history and grow stronger together. Look ahead from atop building blocks of the past, not from the survey lines on the ground. Embrace liberty by uniting and moving toward a future for our country rather than for a country-song idea void of any reality. Without blame, no fingers stabbing through the air, but with reason and insight into the heart of the void experienced by all Americans, Ellison compels us to forge ahead together with a shared American identity, to envision that better future for who we are rather than who our prejudices and fears dictate us to be. With Juneteenth came the freedom to pursue freedom.
Remember that.
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I don't listen to country music so forgive my inability to properly reference this song; a song I abhor. I have seen the music video though. The guitar-slinging singer hops out of his Chevy pickup wearing a baseball cap and mechanics shirt singing about all the characteristics of a "real" American. As I watched this video, as a man whose head remains too large for donning baseball caps and drives a small sedan, I felt entirely un-American. And enraged. His depiction undoubtedly represents some Americans but not nearly all of them. His arrogance infuriated me. Yet there he sang, describing an easy-to-swallow, why-would-you-want-to-be-anything-different, if-you're-not-like-me-than-leave but grotesquely inaccurate American identity - "a gaudy illusion".
As Ralph Ellison, again, blew my mind I embraced what I read as his master theme. He chose a passage from T.S. Eliot as his epigraph which dictates a theoretical function of memory; how it weaves itself into the construction of identity. As opposed to American Values and American Aspirations, the American Identity does not comfortably snuggle into one mold.
At times stylistically reminiscent of Hemingway, but with an expanded vocabulary, and Joyce, but with effective rule-breaking, Ellison constructed a text, though partial, resounding with a grandeur equal to the message he conveys. While reading I felt a sense of nostalgia even though no event or semantic frequency made direct reference to any personal experience of mine. The text itself seemed to touch something universally interlaced through the human psyche; a buried consciousness and Ellison alone knew the language. By telling the story through jazz, sermons, revivals, conversations, speeches, and films, Ellison maps a plot of the mind; each event a memory layered by perspectives from both Hickman and Bliss.
As opposed to Bliss, Hickman embraces his past. He wrestles with it, of course, continuously questioning how it could have led to the realization of a good man. But Bliss ignores his on the grounds of his unknown origin. He experiences a moment which annihilates his innocence but instead of embracing the event as a catalyst for his growth and betterment, he runs away to make himself the way he envisions rather than evolving with the circumstances of his history under grace and integrity. Hickman needed humbling, yet he allowed it because of his decency. Bliss seems to erase his character in order to make space for a new one. I don't blame Bliss. Perhaps living a life ignorant of one's origins excuses such desperate groping for identity. However, regardless of blame, consequences persist. Perhaps Bliss ought to have embraced his upbringing and allowed his character to process that past appropriately. Yet the question still remains: without a history, what kind of confidence can one have in their character? Is it truly their character? As America chooses to selectively remember its history - looking forward to the identity it can create autonomous of history - how can we be sure of who we are?
Some might commend our ability to reinvent ourselves, to look forward to shaping our national identity. But if we always look forward, are we ever doing it? If we don't remember what shaped us, will we ever be there? And if we do not shape or remember shaping our identity, will we ever have character?
Ellison called Emancipation a gaudy illusion. Of course, it legally abolished slavery but as a nation we still haven't tasted true liberty. Our petty differences, our defiance against our actual character, leave us clinging to the gates of our cells. If we don't allow the successes and mistakes of our past to shape us, we will always run from them. They will always control and dictate our running like a treadmill in a jail cell. Our choices will never originate with liberty and one unified ambition but with a dictatorial order from our fear and hatred.
Abolish "the gaudy illusion" and allow our memories to shape our national identity; allow our character to venture through the purifying fires of history and grow stronger together. Look ahead from atop building blocks of the past, not from the survey lines on the ground. Embrace liberty by uniting and moving toward a future for our country rather than for a country-song idea void of any reality. Without blame, no fingers stabbing through the air, but with reason and insight into the heart of the void experienced by all Americans, Ellison compels us to forge ahead together with a shared American identity, to envision that better future for who we are rather than who our prejudices and fears dictate us to be. With Juneteenth came the freedom to pursue freedom.
Remember that.
June 15, 2024
How does one follow up a masterpiece? Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is, in my humble say-so, one of the greatest works of fiction ever written. Genius. Perhaps Ellison should have stopped there, but he spent decades trying to put together his second novel. When he died in 1994, this still-not-published work was found to be more than 2,000 pages long without any clear conclusion or pathway. In an effort to get something out there, editor John Callahan had Juneteenth published, although this novel is only a fraction of the total work that Ellison had written.
We seek out the warm seacoasts of leisure, the quiet cool caverns of forgetfulness...
Ellison could write. Words and paragraphs that seem to justify their grandness regardless of subject. The two main characters in this book are Senator Sunraider and Reverend Hickman (better known as "God's Trombone"). Sunraider is a racist baiter who gets shot at the beginning of the tale. Hickman is the African-American man who raised Sunraider from birth. How the Senator changed is supposed to be the rest of the tale, but sometimes I had a difficult time following the overall outline. The section where Hickman narrates the child's upbringing was the most absorbing part, as I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
But there never seems to be a defined ending, so I never really learned about Sunraider as an adult. I get the idea that the whole concept is supposed to be about America and betrayal, but it just became a bit jumbled. Hickman was more interesting anyway. Mind you, the editor did a smash-up job just getting it to publication, but maybe Ellison never really had a finish in mind (the entire work is now published as Three Days Before the Shooting...). An epic tale needled down to a more serviceable edition is the easiest way to describe this book.
Book Season = Summer (carnivals of memory)
We seek out the warm seacoasts of leisure, the quiet cool caverns of forgetfulness...
Ellison could write. Words and paragraphs that seem to justify their grandness regardless of subject. The two main characters in this book are Senator Sunraider and Reverend Hickman (better known as "God's Trombone"). Sunraider is a racist baiter who gets shot at the beginning of the tale. Hickman is the African-American man who raised Sunraider from birth. How the Senator changed is supposed to be the rest of the tale, but sometimes I had a difficult time following the overall outline. The section where Hickman narrates the child's upbringing was the most absorbing part, as I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
But there never seems to be a defined ending, so I never really learned about Sunraider as an adult. I get the idea that the whole concept is supposed to be about America and betrayal, but it just became a bit jumbled. Hickman was more interesting anyway. Mind you, the editor did a smash-up job just getting it to publication, but maybe Ellison never really had a finish in mind (the entire work is now published as Three Days Before the Shooting...). An epic tale needled down to a more serviceable edition is the easiest way to describe this book.
Book Season = Summer (carnivals of memory)
November 19, 2008
Wow.
One reading while breastfeeding is not going to cut it with this book. Talk about layers.
I feel the need to read lots of scholarship about this book, but not right now.
Does it bother you when you read a book that describes someone as a "great" something but gives no evidence of their being "great"? Well, this book delivers in that department. It's about a preacher and a politician and boy is it packed with prime examples of preaching and politicking (especially the former).
I wonder what the rest of this unfinished novel included (Ellison died before completing it after 40-some years of working on it). Maybe I'll have to pick up the academic version one of these days . . .
One reading while breastfeeding is not going to cut it with this book. Talk about layers.
I feel the need to read lots of scholarship about this book, but not right now.
Does it bother you when you read a book that describes someone as a "great" something but gives no evidence of their being "great"? Well, this book delivers in that department. It's about a preacher and a politician and boy is it packed with prime examples of preaching and politicking (especially the former).
I wonder what the rest of this unfinished novel included (Ellison died before completing it after 40-some years of working on it). Maybe I'll have to pick up the academic version one of these days . . .
August 17, 2020
A beautifully written, but unfinished novel, Juneteenth left me wanting more. The language of this book ranges from soaring religious rhetoric to a wonderfully staccato poetry reminiscent of jazz scatting. The story is told somewhat in reverse, using the dueling flashbacks of the two main characters. We gradually learn the story of how Bliss, shot and at death's door in the beginning of this novel, went from child preacher raised by the black preacher Hickman to a race-baiting Senator. Many questions of the relationship between the two and how it came to be are answered, but I felt that Bliss' story arc was left incomplete. We see from his leaving the church the beginnings of his downfall, but it feels like there was more to tell. This is the necessary frustration of reading an unfinished novel, of course. For what is there, however, this was a great read and well worth the time.
June 19, 2021
I rate this 4.5. It took me longer than I wanted to finish this book. While reading it, I knew I would get more out of this upon subsequent readings. It's a rich, and highly textured novel. Ellison was at the height of his novelistic craft, and attacked the construction of the American racial caste system with philosophical tenacity.
What's impressive is that this is a novel-in-progress edited into a reader's edition by literary scholar John F. Callahan. Callahan's introduction and afterword are intriguing in and of themselves giving the reader insight into what he could discern from Ellison's unfinished manuscript and copious notes on the work. In addition, Charles Johnson's Introduction is stirring and fitting. Readers of Ellison can only wish how he would have completed this work; it's also interesting that he never finished this work that he started soon after Invisible Man. According to Callahan, the book was basically a complete novel by the early 1970s, but he continued to revise until the mid 1980s. For those of us who write, whether works of fiction like Ellison or works of non-fiction like me, what will we leave behind that's unfinished?
As mentioned, the book is a stirring treatment of race in America much more so than Invisible Man. The setting is right at mid-century just before the Modern Civil Rights period. Though Ellison worked on this novel for 40 years he never shifted the setting. It is also a book about historical consciousness. What do Americans choose to remember about their history? How does history continue to impact the present? I'm not going to enter a discussion on this here for fear of spoiling the reading of future readers. What I will say here is that the book is full of African American idioms and cadences that are funny and endearing. Ellison's grasp on African American life and culture comes shinning through in all of its folksiness including a strong emphasis on African American Christian culture.
Lastly, Ellison was prescient about how American politics is inherently a race game. He also saw how this game could end for racist whites reminiscent of Morrison's creation of the Seven Days in Song of Solomon. Thank goodness this novel in this form exists. Without the work of Callahan editing, American literature would have been without such a relevant novel that speaks to the problem of race in America.
What's impressive is that this is a novel-in-progress edited into a reader's edition by literary scholar John F. Callahan. Callahan's introduction and afterword are intriguing in and of themselves giving the reader insight into what he could discern from Ellison's unfinished manuscript and copious notes on the work. In addition, Charles Johnson's Introduction is stirring and fitting. Readers of Ellison can only wish how he would have completed this work; it's also interesting that he never finished this work that he started soon after Invisible Man. According to Callahan, the book was basically a complete novel by the early 1970s, but he continued to revise until the mid 1980s. For those of us who write, whether works of fiction like Ellison or works of non-fiction like me, what will we leave behind that's unfinished?
As mentioned, the book is a stirring treatment of race in America much more so than Invisible Man. The setting is right at mid-century just before the Modern Civil Rights period. Though Ellison worked on this novel for 40 years he never shifted the setting. It is also a book about historical consciousness. What do Americans choose to remember about their history? How does history continue to impact the present? I'm not going to enter a discussion on this here for fear of spoiling the reading of future readers. What I will say here is that the book is full of African American idioms and cadences that are funny and endearing. Ellison's grasp on African American life and culture comes shinning through in all of its folksiness including a strong emphasis on African American Christian culture.
Lastly, Ellison was prescient about how American politics is inherently a race game. He also saw how this game could end for racist whites reminiscent of Morrison's creation of the Seven Days in Song of Solomon. Thank goodness this novel in this form exists. Without the work of Callahan editing, American literature would have been without such a relevant novel that speaks to the problem of race in America.
June 26, 2020
This was more of a 3.5 star for me.
August 10, 2010
How do you judge a book that was unfinished at the time it was taken over by the editor? A book that was 40 years in the making, likely to have been published as three books if the author had finished it before he passed away? Do you judge it as a work in progress, a sketch book piece from the creaters of one of Western Literatures masterpieces? After all, Elisson never handed this book to his publisher and said "It is done". It seems unfair to judge it as a finished work bearing Ellison's name, but on the other hand, he's dead and probably doesn't care. The book IS published, it is promoted as a completed novel by the people who are making money from it (Ellison's estate as well as the publisher), so it should be held up to whatever standards the reader uses to judge other, more traditionally published books. In that case, I say that Juneteenth: A Novel, while no where near the glory of Invisible Man, is not a bad book. As character driven stories go, it's got the makings of something truly fascinating. Sen. Adam Sundraider's orgin story as Bliss, a boy raised to be a white preacher in the southern Black tradition by the charismatic Reverend Hickman, is not only a lesson in a history that could have been, it's good reading. However, as Bliss/Sunraider grows older, his trauma induced memories grow weaker. It's not that he stop remembering, he just doesn't remember things is a form that makes for good reading. Hickman disappears from the narrative for two long to explain why he was so important in the beginning. You can definitely spot that there where two books plotted at the time Ellison died, and Callahan's editing can't fill the holes between them.
January 4, 2008
Adore this book. I found that, despite its strange construction as a book, Juneteenth stands on its own as a masterpiece of American lit... and knowing Ellison's history and the toil that went into its writing only adds to the book's classicness.
Juneteenth is one small excerpt of Ellison's 2000+ manuscript after the Invisible Man. Ellison spent years on the follow-up story, enduring a '66 fire that burned the initial manuscript, and tearing through writing and re-writing Juneteenth for the rest of his life. Less than ten years after his death, a small excerpt of the long, disjointed manuscript was published here.
While the book may frustrate some as a mere piecemeal of what Ellison "intended" for the final novel, I think this book stands on its own. Its imagery and commentary on 20th century America and African-American culture, racial and religious symbolism, and southern history are breathtaking at times.
Juneteenth is one small excerpt of Ellison's 2000+ manuscript after the Invisible Man. Ellison spent years on the follow-up story, enduring a '66 fire that burned the initial manuscript, and tearing through writing and re-writing Juneteenth for the rest of his life. Less than ten years after his death, a small excerpt of the long, disjointed manuscript was published here.
While the book may frustrate some as a mere piecemeal of what Ellison "intended" for the final novel, I think this book stands on its own. Its imagery and commentary on 20th century America and African-American culture, racial and religious symbolism, and southern history are breathtaking at times.
Read
July 2, 2021Juneteenth
Ralph Ellison
Random House
1999
I became aware of Juneteenth (a national holiday celebrated on June 19th) some years ago. The holiday marks the date that slavery was ended in the United States. On June 19th, 1865, federal agents arrived in Galveston, Texas to free all the enslaved people in the state.
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued a few years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. Although the intention of the Proclamation was that enslaved people should be freed, the Proclamation was severely limited because it only addressed the seditious states that were opposing the Northern United States in the U.S. Civil War.
On June 17, 2021 (this year), Juneteenth (June 19th) was signed into law to officially become a federal holiday.
Juneteenth is also the title of a novel that was written by Ralph Ellison and published after the author’s death in 1999 by Random House. Ralph Waldo Ellison was a critical thinker and writer about race and history in the United States. He wrote many essays and criticism, but only published two novels. His important novel The Invisible Man was published in 1952. His novel Juneteenth was edited and published with his notes after his death in 1994.
In the introduction, Ellison’s colleague and the editor of Juneteenth, John F. Callahan, writes that “Juneteenth is a novel of liberation, literally a celebration of June 19, 1865, the day two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was decreed when Union troops landed in Galveston, Texas, and their commanding officer told the weeping, cheering slaves that they were free. The delay, of course, is symbolic acknowledgment that liberation is the never-ending task of self, group, and nation and that, to endure, liberation must be self-achieved and self-achieving. In his novel Ellison, who took part in more than one ‘Juneteenth ramble’ as a boy in Oklahoma, speaks of false as well as true liberation and of the courage required to tell the difference.”
Since this book is hard to read, I approached it like a mystery. When it opens, a white racist senator from the South experiences an event that renders him a dying man. As he lays dying, he reviews his childhood when he was an orphaned boy raised by a black community that he ran away from. The mystery to me was how did this man become an outspoken racist. If this fictional character were alive today, he would have been one of the few politicians who voted against making Juneteenth an official holiday.
In the book, Ellison delves into the heart of America where the main character (who as a boy was called Bliss) is seduced by the culture that teaches him that racism makes him more important and will be financially profitable for him.
Along the way, Ellison offers the reader such gems of wisdom as uttered by the older black man, a minister, who took him under his wing when the senator was a child: “…But you had a choice, Bliss. You had a chance to join up to be a witness for either side and you let yourself be fouled up. You tried to go with those who raise the failure of love above their heads like a flag and say, ‘See here, I am now a man.’ You wanted to be with those who turn coward before their strongest human need and then say, ‘Look here, I’m brave.’”
The relationship between the older black man, named Hickman, who visits the Senator on his deathbed is explained by Ralph Ellison’s notes which are published in the end of the book: “Hickman despises the man but loves the boy whom the man had been.”
As he sits with the dying man, Hickman ruminates, “Why can’t they face the simple fact that you simply can’t give one bunch of men the license to kill another bunch without punishment, without opening themselves up to being victims? The high as well as the low? Why can’t they realize that when they dull their senses to the killing of one group of men they dull themselves to the preciousness of all human life?”
Reading Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison gave me a deeper insight into the heart of America, the place where American racism, and the root of all oppression, is located.
This is Janet Mason with reviews for Goodreads and Book tube.
January 18, 2012
Ugggg.
I slogged through and made it. And I view that as quite the accomplishment.
Juneteenth is a dialgoue/walk down memory lane/telepathic conversation between a dying racist senator and the black reverend who raised him.
I know that the book is unfinished, but oh my god was it confusing. Subjects and setting change mid-sentence. Characters suddenly appear that we are clearly supposed to be well acquainted with. And towards the end (around page 280 something) was a long chapter in which I never could figure out who the narrator was.
I slogged through and made it. And I view that as quite the accomplishment.
Juneteenth is a dialgoue/walk down memory lane/telepathic conversation between a dying racist senator and the black reverend who raised him.
I know that the book is unfinished, but oh my god was it confusing. Subjects and setting change mid-sentence. Characters suddenly appear that we are clearly supposed to be well acquainted with. And towards the end (around page 280 something) was a long chapter in which I never could figure out who the narrator was.
June 27, 2015
The audio version is narrated very well by Joe Morton but Ellison is a complex writer and I think some sections just have to be read and digested, like the Senate speech and the sermons. I'm going to get a hard copy so I can fully appreciate it.
July 16, 2022
Faticaccia ma… woah
November 15, 2021
I loved the writing, it was so painful and so beautiful. Don't let my inability to express my admiration affect your potential opinion of this book. The writing was breathtaking and heartbreaking. But...
the author never finished this book. He wrote it over a period of forty years, years that saw great change and social upheaval, but he never finished it, so we don't get resolution. I wanted resolution, I guess I always do, but life keeps moving on and some things don't get resolved. So the story is not complete, it is not resolved. One thing that struck me is that I never learned about Juneteenth! It wasn't taught in school. We had President's day and 4th of July, knew about the emancipation of the slaves of course. But never heard of Juneteenth. That seems like an important day for all Americans, the day we as a country abolished slavery! It is a little more complicated than that, you can read about it on Wiki. Pres Lincoln actually outlawed slavery on Jan 1 1863 but it took awhile for states to comply with the law. Texas was the last state, in the Confederacy, to legally comply and that law was signed on June 19, 1865. Delaware and Kentucky didn't free their slaves until an Amendment to the Constitution abolishing "chattel slavery" on Dec. 6, 1865. The last slaves held in the Continental U.S. were in the Indian Territories and they were freed in 1866. But Juneteenth is the day we celebrate the end of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves, an important day for ALL Americans.
Pres Joe Biden just signed the holiday into law and it is celebrated in parts of Mexico as well.
the author never finished this book. He wrote it over a period of forty years, years that saw great change and social upheaval, but he never finished it, so we don't get resolution. I wanted resolution, I guess I always do, but life keeps moving on and some things don't get resolved. So the story is not complete, it is not resolved. One thing that struck me is that I never learned about Juneteenth! It wasn't taught in school. We had President's day and 4th of July, knew about the emancipation of the slaves of course. But never heard of Juneteenth. That seems like an important day for all Americans, the day we as a country abolished slavery! It is a little more complicated than that, you can read about it on Wiki. Pres Lincoln actually outlawed slavery on Jan 1 1863 but it took awhile for states to comply with the law. Texas was the last state, in the Confederacy, to legally comply and that law was signed on June 19, 1865. Delaware and Kentucky didn't free their slaves until an Amendment to the Constitution abolishing "chattel slavery" on Dec. 6, 1865. The last slaves held in the Continental U.S. were in the Indian Territories and they were freed in 1866. But Juneteenth is the day we celebrate the end of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves, an important day for ALL Americans.
Pres Joe Biden just signed the holiday into law and it is celebrated in parts of Mexico as well.
February 3, 2018
In the notes at the end of Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison's editor includes this musing from Ellison: "Was it perversity, or was it that the structure of power demanded that anyone acting out the role would do so in essentially the same way?"
I think this is a great framing of the question at the heart of Juneteenth, a novel about a white boy raised by a black preacher to become a preacher as well who runs away from that life and becomes a race-baiting senator in the pre-Civil Rights Era period. Ellison asks hard questions of us about identity, race, America, and parenthood in searing ways. Infused with the rhythms, cadence, and imagery of black oral tradition, Ellison's prose is absolutely beautiful.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the way women are portrayed in this novel, I still felt that it necessitated five stars because of the beautifully tangled and complex relationship between Hickman and Bliss and the stunning prose.
I think this is a great framing of the question at the heart of Juneteenth, a novel about a white boy raised by a black preacher to become a preacher as well who runs away from that life and becomes a race-baiting senator in the pre-Civil Rights Era period. Ellison asks hard questions of us about identity, race, America, and parenthood in searing ways. Infused with the rhythms, cadence, and imagery of black oral tradition, Ellison's prose is absolutely beautiful.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the way women are portrayed in this novel, I still felt that it necessitated five stars because of the beautifully tangled and complex relationship between Hickman and Bliss and the stunning prose.
March 4, 2017
I was surprised to find that slavery still existed in America even after the death of so many of our young countrymen in a divisive though ultimately decisive war. The title of this work derives from the day in the middle of June a town in the state of Texas finally complied with what had become federal law & formally ended the practice of slavery. The too-long-delayed celebration of newly-freed individuals becomes a backdrop for understanding contemporary politics.
The other reviewers suggest that this work is somewhat different than Ellison's other novels. I agree. Perhaps a useful comparison would be to Kafka's Castle. Each of these books are unfinished masterpieces that illustrate the workings of the author's mind as much as the political atmosphere of the day.
The other reviewers suggest that this work is somewhat different than Ellison's other novels. I agree. Perhaps a useful comparison would be to Kafka's Castle. Each of these books are unfinished masterpieces that illustrate the workings of the author's mind as much as the political atmosphere of the day.
December 6, 2014
Too twisty and stream of consciousness for me. very few real plot points, hard to follow at times. I know this was an editor's work of unfinished notes and whatnot, and maybe I would have liked the whole more, but as it stands, I wasn't that impressed.
June 9, 2022
I'm giving up on this a couple of chapters short of finishing - it's basically a non-novel that the author worked on for forty years and never finished, and then someone tried to edit it into something roughly novel-sized for publication after his death. But it's more of a long, stream-of-consciousness prose poem, full of passages that are largely jibberish. Recommended only for serious Ralph Ellison scholars. (I probably would not have picked it up except that my book club that's meeting on Juneteenth decided to read it in celebration of the Juneteenth holiday.)
July 4, 2025
2.5 stars
Readers should know going into this one that it is a compilation of Ellison’s draft fragments and notes. He did not complete this novel.
Readers should know going into this one that it is a compilation of Ellison’s draft fragments and notes. He did not complete this novel.
July 4, 2020
Recently I read "The Castle," a work published only after the death of its author, Franz Kafka. Similarly, "Juneteenth," the second (and much delayed) novel by Ralph Ellison, was only published after his death in 1994, coming out five years later. I tend to be on guard about anything published posthumously, because the author or authors are no longer around to let me or any other reader know if the final work was what they intended. Kafka infamously told his buddy Max Brod to "burn" all his manuscripts, knowing full well (according to James Hawes) that Brod would do no such thing; he'd gather them together, perhaps punch them up a bit, and bring them out to the world. Similarly, Ellison's second novel was put together in part by his widow and by an author and editor close to Ellison. The subsequent novel is itself part of a larger intended work, a possible multi-volume look at American history especially in terms of race and meaning. That this work is what is available so far means that we must deal with it on its own terms, while keeping in mind the long gestation period and possible multiple directions this very narrative might have taken if Ellison had finished the work or if he had intended it to be published as part of a larger work, instead of as a standalone novel.
With all that being said, taken on its own merits "Juneteenth" is a complex, intoxicating, frustrating look at America as only someone of Ellison's caliber could render it. The story is centered around two different men whose deep, lifelong connection is only revealed once one of them (a segregationist senator) is shot on the floor of the United States Senate. The other man, an African-American preacher, literally birthed the senator and helped to raise him, including him in his revivals as a young "junior preacher" in his own right. Now Senator Sunraider, the boy first knew life as Reverend Bliss, and his "father" was Daddy Hickman, the black preacher. As he lies slowly dying on a hospital bed from his wounds, the senator finds his mind going back into their shared past, and trying to surmise what drove them apart.
What is frustrating about this novel is how much of it remains not on the page, i.e., what Ellison intended versus what we have. I began this review by mentioning Kafka's "The Castle," also published posthumously and literally unfinished at the time of his death (it stops in the middle of a sentence). We'll never know what either man intended their works to be, but it can be gleaned from reading that K. (the main guy in "The Castle") will never really be welcome in the village, much less the titular castle where he was to be received. With "Juneteenth," it's harder to tell what the overall thrust of the narrative was to be; we go in sure that Senator Sunraider will die, and that Daddy Hickman will be at his bedside when that occurs. Whether the shared memories lead to a reconciliation between the two is harder to discern. But, then again, it speaks to the way that America is, in Ellison's time and ours, that any easy thoughts of reconciliation must be hard to find. Where Ellison intended the book to end, and even whether this was merely the end of one story or the beginning of another, the work as a standalone novel still ultimately works because it is, at its heart, a story of how important black is to white in this country (something that we've never been able to admit, even in our most liberal and open-minded white histories of this country). Maybe that's the power of this unfinished second novel; "Invisible Man" ends similarly on a note of waiting for the ways of fortune to change, and so does this novel. Maybe that's the point: there is no ending to the long story of race in America.
With all that being said, taken on its own merits "Juneteenth" is a complex, intoxicating, frustrating look at America as only someone of Ellison's caliber could render it. The story is centered around two different men whose deep, lifelong connection is only revealed once one of them (a segregationist senator) is shot on the floor of the United States Senate. The other man, an African-American preacher, literally birthed the senator and helped to raise him, including him in his revivals as a young "junior preacher" in his own right. Now Senator Sunraider, the boy first knew life as Reverend Bliss, and his "father" was Daddy Hickman, the black preacher. As he lies slowly dying on a hospital bed from his wounds, the senator finds his mind going back into their shared past, and trying to surmise what drove them apart.
What is frustrating about this novel is how much of it remains not on the page, i.e., what Ellison intended versus what we have. I began this review by mentioning Kafka's "The Castle," also published posthumously and literally unfinished at the time of his death (it stops in the middle of a sentence). We'll never know what either man intended their works to be, but it can be gleaned from reading that K. (the main guy in "The Castle") will never really be welcome in the village, much less the titular castle where he was to be received. With "Juneteenth," it's harder to tell what the overall thrust of the narrative was to be; we go in sure that Senator Sunraider will die, and that Daddy Hickman will be at his bedside when that occurs. Whether the shared memories lead to a reconciliation between the two is harder to discern. But, then again, it speaks to the way that America is, in Ellison's time and ours, that any easy thoughts of reconciliation must be hard to find. Where Ellison intended the book to end, and even whether this was merely the end of one story or the beginning of another, the work as a standalone novel still ultimately works because it is, at its heart, a story of how important black is to white in this country (something that we've never been able to admit, even in our most liberal and open-minded white histories of this country). Maybe that's the power of this unfinished second novel; "Invisible Man" ends similarly on a note of waiting for the ways of fortune to change, and so does this novel. Maybe that's the point: there is no ending to the long story of race in America.
July 18, 2020
First, I want to say that I am not one of these white people who had never heard of the holiday/celebration of Juneteenth until 2020 following the Black Lives Matter protests. Every year I figured I should start reading this in May and finish by June 19th, and then June would roll around and I realized I had forgotten. I started reading it this year at the end of April, figuring I'd have plenty of time. But lo and behold, I didn't finish it until July, after SO MUCH had happened in our country.
This book could not be more relevant to our times. Much of it is set in Oklahoma, which Ellison felt held the promise and the tragedy of the American Dream (relocated Native Americans, Tulsa 1921, the Land Rush, Dust Bowl, Bible Belt, rich in oil and potential for climatological disaster). A place that is actually very diverse but whose voice has been exceedingly white, standing in for the greater nation that has such difficulty in acknowledging that it has always been diverse, which rewards people with money and power when they allow themselves to forget history. There is commentary about how the southerners in power are always able to play their knowledge of prejudice and coercion against the disinterest of the northerners. And how the black electorate has given leeway to political machines that have shown the slightest promise of any interest in its plight.
The novel was unfinished; Ellison wrote it for decades. "Juneteenth" is a smaller assemblage from 1999, an attempt at a focused work. There is a longer version published in 2010 titled "Three Days Before the Shooting..." but I think "Juneteenth" was as much as I could grasp. I don't know how Ellison could have ever finished the novel, as it grapples with issues that do not seem resolvable. What we're left with is pure writing, which is great in its beauty and fury. Below is a quotation that I feel is relevant to what was going on in the U.S. while I was deep in this book:
"Do you think a man like me is even interested in the idea of trying to be Christlike? Hell, my papa was a preacher while I’m a horn-blowing gambler. Do you think that after being the son of a black
preacher in this swamp of a country I’d let you put me in the position of trying to act like Christ? Make it easy for you, to destroy mine and me without even the need to remember? And humiliate mine and me and [...] expect me to understand and forgive you and then minister to your needs? Destroy me and mine so that you can cast me down into corruption and the grave and then dig me up next week so that I can serve you? Tell me, what kind of endless, bottomless blind store forgiveness and understanding am I supposed to have? Just tell me where I'm supposed to carry it! What kind of meat and bread am I supposed to eat to nourish it?"
This book could not be more relevant to our times. Much of it is set in Oklahoma, which Ellison felt held the promise and the tragedy of the American Dream (relocated Native Americans, Tulsa 1921, the Land Rush, Dust Bowl, Bible Belt, rich in oil and potential for climatological disaster). A place that is actually very diverse but whose voice has been exceedingly white, standing in for the greater nation that has such difficulty in acknowledging that it has always been diverse, which rewards people with money and power when they allow themselves to forget history. There is commentary about how the southerners in power are always able to play their knowledge of prejudice and coercion against the disinterest of the northerners. And how the black electorate has given leeway to political machines that have shown the slightest promise of any interest in its plight.
The novel was unfinished; Ellison wrote it for decades. "Juneteenth" is a smaller assemblage from 1999, an attempt at a focused work. There is a longer version published in 2010 titled "Three Days Before the Shooting..." but I think "Juneteenth" was as much as I could grasp. I don't know how Ellison could have ever finished the novel, as it grapples with issues that do not seem resolvable. What we're left with is pure writing, which is great in its beauty and fury. Below is a quotation that I feel is relevant to what was going on in the U.S. while I was deep in this book:
"Do you think a man like me is even interested in the idea of trying to be Christlike? Hell, my papa was a preacher while I’m a horn-blowing gambler. Do you think that after being the son of a black
preacher in this swamp of a country I’d let you put me in the position of trying to act like Christ? Make it easy for you, to destroy mine and me without even the need to remember? And humiliate mine and me and [...] expect me to understand and forgive you and then minister to your needs? Destroy me and mine so that you can cast me down into corruption and the grave and then dig me up next week so that I can serve you? Tell me, what kind of endless, bottomless blind store forgiveness and understanding am I supposed to have? Just tell me where I'm supposed to carry it! What kind of meat and bread am I supposed to eat to nourish it?"
August 14, 2017
If you like Ralph Ellison’s writing and worldview as much as I do, you should definitely read this. It’s a fever dream of the USA in the first half of the 20th Century, reveling in explorations of sexuality, politics, race, religion, pop culture, childhood, identity, memory, and nature. It veers between extreme naturalism and allegorical farce. (I think it might be what they call "modernism" (DH Lawrence, James Joyce, WG Sebold) but I never studied literature that way so I dunno?)
Like some other work of Ellison’s it vividly demonstrates the ridiculousness of powerful institutions and traditions, but also their value and utility; that it's all bullshit but it's also all so important. And like Invisible Man, it’s as much the story of some messed-up individuals’ identity journeys as it is about “race” or “America”.
But be prepared for a very bumpy ride. It took me 8 months to read, and it’s not a very long book; nor am I a particularly slow reader. (Big thanks to the Brooklyn Public Library for their liberal renewal policy.)
Some of the slowness was fine and good. There’s some deeply polished writing here, with a lot to savor in each phrase. And quite a lot of the book is speech (whether inner or outer) and seems almost made to be read aloud. I often had to slow down my reading to speaking speed. I even read some of it aloud (at home, alone), and that really worked. If I “read” it again, I might try the audiobook.
While it’s often unclear exactly what's happening in the narrative, the telling is beautiful and powerful. At a certain point, I stopped trying to make all the pieces add up and just let it wash over me. Clarity may be possible here, but it’s perhaps not worth the labor. It doesn’t feel quite right to call it stream of consciousness though, because each sentence seems so carefully constructed.
The big problem is that, as a novel, it’s a disaster. The whole is significantly less than the sum of the parts. I have trouble believing that this is the best book that could be decocted from the raw materials. (Though I haven't tried to read Three Days Before the Shooting yet.) Nearly all the parts are good, and many are jaw-droppingly amazing. But the assemblage is a mess. Disjointed, uneven, poorly sectioned and distributed, and just a burden to wade through. I really wish it wasn’t half in italics, that quote marks were deployed more often, that chapter and section breaks were more frequent. Maybe even invasively signpost it bit (e.g. “at this point, we assume the author intended a lengthy story about X, which takes us from what you just read to the next part”). Basically the editing is abysmal, and makes this book a burden and a chore.
Like some other work of Ellison’s it vividly demonstrates the ridiculousness of powerful institutions and traditions, but also their value and utility; that it's all bullshit but it's also all so important. And like Invisible Man, it’s as much the story of some messed-up individuals’ identity journeys as it is about “race” or “America”.
But be prepared for a very bumpy ride. It took me 8 months to read, and it’s not a very long book; nor am I a particularly slow reader. (Big thanks to the Brooklyn Public Library for their liberal renewal policy.)
Some of the slowness was fine and good. There’s some deeply polished writing here, with a lot to savor in each phrase. And quite a lot of the book is speech (whether inner or outer) and seems almost made to be read aloud. I often had to slow down my reading to speaking speed. I even read some of it aloud (at home, alone), and that really worked. If I “read” it again, I might try the audiobook.
While it’s often unclear exactly what's happening in the narrative, the telling is beautiful and powerful. At a certain point, I stopped trying to make all the pieces add up and just let it wash over me. Clarity may be possible here, but it’s perhaps not worth the labor. It doesn’t feel quite right to call it stream of consciousness though, because each sentence seems so carefully constructed.
The big problem is that, as a novel, it’s a disaster. The whole is significantly less than the sum of the parts. I have trouble believing that this is the best book that could be decocted from the raw materials. (Though I haven't tried to read Three Days Before the Shooting yet.) Nearly all the parts are good, and many are jaw-droppingly amazing. But the assemblage is a mess. Disjointed, uneven, poorly sectioned and distributed, and just a burden to wade through. I really wish it wasn’t half in italics, that quote marks were deployed more often, that chapter and section breaks were more frequent. Maybe even invasively signpost it bit (e.g. “at this point, we assume the author intended a lengthy story about X, which takes us from what you just read to the next part”). Basically the editing is abysmal, and makes this book a burden and a chore.
July 6, 2025
2025 Summer Reading with Joy
2025 Butler Library Bingo [Summer Reading] #18
From the besties [she is a Professor of English] review on this book: "Readers should know going into this one that it is a compilation of Ellison’s draft fragments and notes. He did not complete this novel."
2025 Butler Library Bingo [Summer Reading] #18
From the besties [she is a Professor of English] review on this book: "Readers should know going into this one that it is a compilation of Ellison’s draft fragments and notes. He did not complete this novel."
March 13, 2013
Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison's posthumous follow-up to Invisible Man. It's about a senator, Bliss, who is shot on the senate floor, and the African-American man, Hickman, who raised him. It's also about identity and how the way we identify ourselves affects our actions and how we treat others. Despite having been raised by African-Americans, Bliss grows up to become a racist, white senator. Once he decides to be white, this influences the future actions of his life, which leads to the assassination attempt.
The book alternates between first person from Bliss's point of view, to first person from Hickman's point of view, to third person. It also alternates from detailing the present relationship between Bliss and Hickman by his hospital bed to the past as told by Hickman and remembered by Bliss. This enables Ellison to tell the story from all sides and give the reader greater insight as to how the characters developed to become who they were. This aspect of the novel potentially could have made for a frustrating and incomprehensible read, but Ellison does a wonderful job of sequencing and pacing the story so that it is easy for the reader to understand the story as Ellison intended it.
The book also has resonance in the twenty-first century despite the fact that Ellison began writing it in the late 1950s. We can all relate to how our sense of identity and our circumstance can influence who we are and who we could become. Sure, the twenty-first century American reader may take civil rights for granted nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, this doesn't make the overarching themes of identity and circumstance any less relevant. This is still and enjoyable and enlightening read regardless of the many changes since it was written.
The book alternates between first person from Bliss's point of view, to first person from Hickman's point of view, to third person. It also alternates from detailing the present relationship between Bliss and Hickman by his hospital bed to the past as told by Hickman and remembered by Bliss. This enables Ellison to tell the story from all sides and give the reader greater insight as to how the characters developed to become who they were. This aspect of the novel potentially could have made for a frustrating and incomprehensible read, but Ellison does a wonderful job of sequencing and pacing the story so that it is easy for the reader to understand the story as Ellison intended it.
The book also has resonance in the twenty-first century despite the fact that Ellison began writing it in the late 1950s. We can all relate to how our sense of identity and our circumstance can influence who we are and who we could become. Sure, the twenty-first century American reader may take civil rights for granted nearly fifty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964; however, this doesn't make the overarching themes of identity and circumstance any less relevant. This is still and enjoyable and enlightening read regardless of the many changes since it was written.
August 3, 2012
It is well known that Faulkner had a profound influence on Ellison's work. Since I was so enamored of Faulkner's style, I expected Juneteenth to foster the same admiration. I dived in, engaged from the start with the troubled and multifaceted Sunraider, and Hickman who was deemed a saint on one hand, and an exploiter on the other. But by the time I got to the last chapter, I nearly gave up. Sunraider's hallucinatory stream of memories and visions go on for the entire chapter. It was difficult to separate reality from his visions. Ellison never finished Juneteenth. It was pieced together posthumously by an academic colleague who claimed to have an idea as to how Ellison wanted this book to progress. Considering his other work, I question whether or not this version true to Ellison's intent. Fot this I give it only three stars.
January 31, 2015
Ralph Ellison was an American writer of powerful intensity. I found Juneteenth, like The Invisible Man, pleasingly absorbing, and, indeed, gripping, and a rare thing, a religious modern novel that depicts a good black preacher, "Daddy" Hickman, with a compelling Christian faith, and a compelling account of his conversion. Ellison's depiction of black community with dynamic realism, capturing as it does the pith and vinegar and goodness and life and peril of the people, and illuminating from the perspective of good, common folk the experience of being on the receiving end of racist terrorism, surely is a better antidote to racism, a better shaper of godly empathy, than a self-important sermon on social justice, because he reaches to the universal human core through the particularity of the people he depicts and the puissance of his art.
June 25, 2007
Ellison died before he completed this novel about a child preacher who later passes for white and becomes a segregationist politician. On his death bed, said politician finds that religion and his identity cannot be held at bay - and neither can the Black community, which though he has forsaken them, have not abandoned him.
This is interesting. To me the book was a departure from Ellison's other work and had notes of Baldwin and Gaines (especially Gaines' Lesson Before Dying). It was nice to read a piece of history and see Ellison's evolution. Still it was sad to know that he never completed his novel - what really is a great story - wholeheartedly an American story.
This is interesting. To me the book was a departure from Ellison's other work and had notes of Baldwin and Gaines (especially Gaines' Lesson Before Dying). It was nice to read a piece of history and see Ellison's evolution. Still it was sad to know that he never completed his novel - what really is a great story - wholeheartedly an American story.
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