“And Suddenly You Can See The Stars”: Writing as a Means of Self-Creation and Resistance in Ellison and Coates

Abstract

This paper focuses on two works belonging to the African-American literary canon: Ralph Ellison’s 1947 novel Invisible Man and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2015 memoir Between the World and Me. I seek to understand the importance of the act of writing in both texts by applying existential principles from Jean-Paul Sartre to the writing in these works in order to understand how it functions as a means of both self-objectification and self-creation. In addition to writing’s personal nature, I also consider social aspects by examining some of the ways in which these works support and defy conventions of the African-American literary canon. External influences, including popular culture and current events, also influence these texts, and the books in turn demonstrate an ability to change the world by interacting with it. Ultimately, these two texts demonstrate how the act of writing shapes and creates both the writer and the world around him.