Reviews for Shadow and Act

The average rating for Shadow and Act based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-12-08 00:00:00 Timothy Karas Ellison's first collection of essays are nothing short of genius. This book really shows and gives a good look at the mind and ideas of the man who created the masterpiece Invisible Man. This book was what I used to diversify my literary taste. I would not have discovered the likes of Twain, Joyce, Stephen Crane (who's The Red Badge of Courage I need to remember to review, a very good story), Will Faulkner, Herman Melville, and others. He also gives a very thorough account of Richard Wright and his work, who had mentored him and James Baldwin personally, when he came to New York. Incidentally this book caused me to stop reading Native Son in favor of Black Boy, which I will get to some day. It also chronicled a very good debate between him and Irving Howe, among many other things. This book (and more importantly this author) is what I have to thank for shaping me up to be a serious reader and examiner of not just literature but culture and art overall.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-02 00:00:00 Steve Self An AMAZING collection of essays that articulates Ellison's dilemma for a negotiations of a sort of jazz-writing which: dances between his places as an Afro-American writer, with all the inherent social-political connotation towards which the burden of representation is placed ; also as a modernist (by way of Eliot), who creates a detached aesthetic from which an universal work can be created. I find these essays to be the perfect example of the tension between the political/poetic that is often faced by many writers of color.