Today we will talk and express the feelings and difficulties of a man called by the name of Ralph Waldo Ellison. Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914 in Oklahoma City. His parents were Ida (Brownie) and Lewis Ellison. Ralph was named after the famous New England poet, "Ralph Waldo Emerson". His father (Lewis Ellison) was killed in a car accident when Ralph was only three years old. They were like most children. Ralph's mother had high expectations for her two boys. When he was five years old, his mother (Ida) bought him a small desk, a chair and a typewriter for Christmas. They were evicted from their home, so they moved into rent-free housing with shelves full of abandoned books. One book they left behind that Ralph read was The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper ten times when he was eight. Also at the age of eight Ellison became interested in building and working on radios. He made a white friend named Hoolie who was interested in the same hobby. Later his friend moved to apply for his amateur radio license. After his friend moved away, he contributed his life to music. He taught himself and was taught to play the cornet by his neighbor, Mr. Mead. He went to try out and was accepted into the school band at the age of eight. Ellison spent four years at the all-black Douglass High School from 1929 to 1933. To help with household expenses he worked a variety of odd jobs, which included mowing lawns, selling newspapers, working as an elevator operator, shining shoes, and drinking sodas at Randolph's Drug Store. During his childhood, during the cotton picking season, Ellison's classmates would go to work in the field with their parents and return home with new jokes and black stories, which Ellison had... middle of paper... exotic. A 1965 "Book World Poll" identifying Invisible Man as the most distinguished postwar American novel. During Ralph Ellison's writing career he wrote the novel "The Invisible Man". His novel was based on stories he heard from his Tuskegee friends who served in the United States Air Force. Many of Ellison's short stories were published while he was in the army. Two of the most popular were "King of the Bingo Game" and "Flying Home". Thus he began to make a name for himself as a short story writer. Ellison's goal was to portray the richness and fullness of black life in America and the importance of black folk tradition in defining the black person. He was determined to illustrate the fusion of black and white cultures in America and realized that he personified the theory and was himself a product of all the great writers of the past..