Tag: literature

How Ralph Ellison Punked Us

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Daily writing prompt
Who is your favorite historical figure?
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DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE

On Naming the Nameless, Winning the Awards, and Blinding Us with 1,369 Light Bulbs

There are far too many historical figures I respect to name just one. Frankly, the question borders on the ridiculous—like picking a favorite breath of air. Some names rise above the noise—revolutionaries, artists, philosophers—but reducing history to a single “favorite” feels cheap. That said, I got my new glasses today, so I’m in a decent mood. Let’s talk about one who actually did something seismic with his voice.

Let’s talk about Ralph Ellison.

In 1953, Invisible Man hit like a lightning strike. This wasn’t another book about slavery. This wasn’t a moral fable. This was something else—blunt, surreal, unflinching. America was long overdue for a story that didn’t contort the Black experience into something palatable. Ellison delivered a story that didn’t apologize, didn’t translate. He wrote it exactly the way it needed to be heard.

And he did it through a narrator with no name.

That choice wasn’t symbolic—it was the whole point. The protagonist is unseen by society, overlooked even when he’s standing in plain sight. He becomes whatever people need him to be—token, tool, threat—until he’s nothing but a projection. Ellison strips him of a name to make that erasure visible. He is invisible not because he hides, but because no one bothers to see him.

But Ellison didn’t just tell a story. He orchestrated an experience.

Before he became a writer, Ellison studied music—trumpet, specifically, at Tuskegee Institute. He trained as a composer, not a novelist. And that background echoes through every page of Invisible Man. The structure of the novel plays like jazz: unpredictable, looping, improvisational, yet rigorously controlled. It doesn’t move from point A to point B. It riffs. It distorts. It circles, breaks down, explodes, and rebuilds.

That musical sensibility fused with his literary growth under the mentorship of Richard Wright, who helped him see the potential of fiction as a weapon, not just of protest, but of truth. Yet while Wright carved truth with sharp realism, Ellison went inward, sideways, and underground. He made the psychological terrain just as political as the streets above it.

But how did a novel that daring even get published in 1952?

It took time—and the right people. Ellison spent nearly seven years writing Invisible Man, supported by a small circle of editors, mentors, and radical literary journals. Early on, he published essays and short stories in magazines like New Masses and Partisan Review, spaces that were open to racial politics and modernist experimentation.

Then came Albert Erskine, an editor at Random House, who saw early chapters and backed Ellison all the way. Erskine didn’t try to tame the book. He gave Ellison the room to go deeper, to make it more challenging, more honest. That kind of editorial trust was rare, especially for a debut novel by a Black author writing outside the box.

Ellison didn’t chase the market. He wrote the novel he needed to write. And somehow—despite the Cold War climate, despite the publishing world’s conservatism—it broke through. Maybe because it was just that good.

Surreal scenes erupt throughout the novel—the Liberty Paints factory mixing “Optic White” with black drops, the death and objectification of Tod Clifton, the Brotherhood’s exploitation dressed up as activism. These moments don’t just symbolize oppression. They make the reader feel its absurdity and weight. Ellison crafted them not just as plot points but as emotional dissonance, like minor chords and unresolved melodies that leave you unsettled.

And then there’s the ending: the basement, the 1,369 stolen light bulbs, the quiet. The narrator isn’t defeated. He’s aware. He knows now that invisibility isn’t something he caused—it’s something he’s forced to live inside. But from that underground space, clarity emerges. He hasn’t escaped the system. But he sees it.

In 1953, Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction, making Ralph Ellison the first African American to ever win the prize. And he didn’t win it by default. He beat out John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Jean Stafford, Isabel Bolton, and others. That’s not just a literary win. That’s a cannon blast.

Ellison didn’t provide us with a clear arc or a moral fable. He gave us a jazz-soaked, fragmented, blistering novel that stared invisibility dead in the eye and refused to blink. Invisible Man didn’t demand visibility. It took it.

And over seventy years later, it still doesn’t let you look away.

Emotion in Disguise: What Modernist Poetry Really Feels

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ESSAY – JAVA & VERSE

How Teaching, Trauma, and Innovation Keep Modernism Alive Today

When I lectured on poetry, I always felt that the material used wasn’t keeping pace with the times. Poetry has evolved—radically, beautifully—but the way we teach it? Not so much.

The curriculum often clings to rigid categories, ignoring the electric shift in voice, form, and identity that defines our current generation of poets. Modernism, in particular, gets framed as cold and impenetrable, when in truth, it’s full of feeling—just coded, fragmented, and refracted through the chaos of its age. This essay is my attempt to reframe that lens, to show that even when modernist poets claimed to escape emotion, they were actually inventing new ways to express it.

Modernism in Poetry: Emotion in Disguise

Once upon a time, poetry was in love with itself. It rhymed, it sighed, it danced through rose gardens under the moonlight.

Then came Modernism, and poetry had a breakdown. Or maybe a breakthrough. Either way, it stopped pretending everything made sense.

Modernist poetry emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a fiery rejection of Victorian sentimentality and Romantic melodrama. The old poetic order collapsed under the weight of war, industrial chaos, and deep existential dread. Modernist poets didn’t just shift gears—they set fire to the vehicle and walked away from the wreckage.

World War I turned landscapes into graveyards and ideals into ruins. Suddenly, poetry couldn’t afford to be polite. The genteel, pastoral verses of the past felt dishonest in a world haunted by gas masks, shellshock, and trench mud. Poets had to find a new language for a new kind of grief—and modernism answered the call.

Their rallying cry? Make it new. But that didn’t mean shinier or simpler. It meant fragmented, disjointed, allusive, ambiguous, and unapologetically difficult. It meant challenging readers to confront reality as it was: broken, unstable, and brutally honest.

Emotion in the Age of Irony

T.S. Eliot, one of modernism’s high priests, famously argued for poetic “impersonality”—an escape from emotion rather than an outpouring of it. In essays like “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” he promoted a poetry that transformed feelings into universal truths through rigorous craft.

But let’s be honest: Eliot’s work is emotionally loaded. The Waste Land practically sweats anxiety, loss, and spiritual exhaustion. It’s just wearing a very intellectual trench coat. Consider the lines:

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

That’s not emotionless—that’s terror, disillusionment, and existential dread, crystallized in a single line.

Modernist poets didn’t stop feeling. They just stopped making it obvious.

Emotion didn’t leave the building; it ducked behind fragmented syntax, layered allusions, and shifting perspectives. If Romantic poets sobbed openly, Modernists cried in code. Virginia Woolf said it best: “On or about December 1910, human character changed.” The form had to follow.

The Poet’s New Job Description

So, is the poet still supposed to express their feelings?

Yes—but not necessarily in the way previous generations understood it. The modernist poet became less of a lyrical confessor and more of a curator of chaos, a mapmaker of mental and social disintegration.

They still responded to the world—they just didn’t trust language to carry raw emotion without distortion. The job wasn’t to simply say, “I feel,” but to build structures that evoke feeling in the reader through complexity.

Take Ezra Pound’s imagism, for example. The emotions are there, but compressed into precise images—a few words with the density of granite. In “In a Station of the Metro,” he writes:

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.”

In just 14 words, he delivers a fleeting, haunted image of urban life—emotion without explanation.

Or H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), whose poetry strips myth to its emotional core, blending trauma and transcendence through crystal-cut language. Her poem “Oread” demands:

“Whirl up, sea— / Whirl your pointed pines, / Splash your great pines / On our rocks.”

The natural world becomes charged with urgency and erotic force. It’s minimalist, but the emotion crackles.

Enter the Outsiders: Ethnic Voices Redefine the Game

Jean Toomer, author of Cane, masterfully blended poetic and narrative modes to explore race, memory, and identity in modernist form. His lines from the vignette “November Cotton Flower” are both lyrical and piercing:

“But cotton flowers bloomed as the snow fell. / The same thing happened every year, but / It was just as strange to him now as then.”

Toomer’s work drifts between prose and poetry, reality and myth, reflecting the fragmented self of the early 20th-century Black experience.

Another haunting moment comes from the poem “Georgia Dusk,” where Toomer captures the tension between cultural memory and modern displacement:

“A feast of moon and men and barking hounds, / An orgy for some genius of the South / With blood-hot eyes and chicken-lust and Dixie / Moonlight…”

This excerpt seethes with layered imagery—ritual, violence, beauty, and longing—all compressed into a snapshot of Southern Black life distorted by history and myth.

Nella Larsen, and others grappled with identity, dual consciousness, and racial experience using all the modernist tools—fragmentation, symbolism, free indirect discourse.

  • Asian American poets like Yone Noguchi and Sadakichi Hartmann merged Eastern poetic tradition with Western modernist aesthetics, expressing alienation and cultural negotiation in radically new forms. Hartmann’s haiku and Noguchi’s lyrical innovations brought introspective nuance to the movement.
  • Latin American writers associated with Modernismo, like Rubén Darío and José Martí, were remixing lyricism and experiment before Anglo-American poets caught up. Darío’s poetic voice declared a rebellion against colonial linguistic norms while experimenting with form:

“Youth, divine treasure, / you go and will not return.”

These voices challenged the notion that modernism was an elite, Eurocentric experiment. They showed that fragmented identities, complex cultural legacies, and emotional nuance weren’t just compatible with modernism—they were its heart.

Why It Still Matters

Today’s poets are still echoing the modernist ethos—whether consciously or not. Ocean Vuong’s fragmented lyricism, Claudia Rankine’s hybrid forms, and Terrance Hayes’ formal innovation all carry the spirit of modernism into the 21st century. These writers play with structure, voice, and silence in ways that resonate deeply with modernist experimentation. Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is, in many ways, a modernist epic disguised as memoir, laced with dislocation and myth. Rankine’s Citizen fuses poetry, essay, and visual art—alienating and urgent. Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin reshapes a traditional form into something eerily postmodern, yet deeply modernist in its emotional restraint and coded rage.

As a teacher, I believe reintroducing modernism through this living lineage is essential. If we teach it not as a dusty archive, but as an ongoing conversation—a set of tools that today’s poets still use, twist, and question—it becomes something vibrant. Something urgent. Something real.

Modernism isn’t over. It’s evolved. It continues to whisper—sometimes scream—through the voices of today’s poets, who dismantle and reconstruct identity, form, and meaning with every line they write. That’s not just exciting—it’s a necessary response to our own disjointed world.

So read it. Re-read it. Struggle with it. That’s part of the experience—because poetry, like life, doesn’t hand you answers. It demands your attention, your resilience, your curiosity. It mirrors the way we stumble through grief, joy, contradiction, and complexity. In an age of tweets and filters, poetry—and especially modernist poetry—reminds us how to sit with ambiguity. As Eliot might say, it is the “still point of the turning world”—poetry that stands still while everything else falls apart.

In a world still wrestling with identity crises, global conflict, cultural hybridity, and the failure of institutions, modernist poetry remains weirdly relevant. Its refusal to pretend, its hunger for new forms, and its emotionally guarded yet powerfully resonant core—what we might call “coded vulnerability”—offer something today’s overly curated emotional expressions can’t: authentic complexity.

I’d Be Shaft, Obviously (Everyone Else Needs Therapy)

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Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
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DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE

An aggressively personal breakdown of alter egos, revenge spirals, and why fictional characters are one emotional snap away from disaster.

Ever watch a movie, read a book, or binge a show and think, Wow, this character really needs therapy? Like… immediately. They have pills for that. And boundaries. And emotional support animals. But instead of signing up for BetterHelp, fictional characters usually take the scenic route: they grow an alter ego, light their lives on fire, and call it “justice.”

Sometimes you’re just sitting there, watching a perfectly normal person start talking to their dead father’s ghost, and all you can think is: They are so fucked.

Let’s talk about that.

The Alter Ego: Fancy Latin for “Oh no, he’s talking to himself again”

There’s something darkly satisfying about a character cracking right down the middle. Not like “oops, I’m having a rough day” cracking—but full-blown talking to their reflection in the mirror and the reflection talks back cracking.

Dr. Jekyll doesn’t just dabble in science—he mainlines Victorian repression and conjures a walking midlife crisis named Hyde. And Tyler Durden? He’s what happens when toxic masculinity drinks four espressos and finds Nietzsche on Reddit.

“Man is something that shall be overcome.” – Nietzsche

Too bad most characters take that as an invitation to become unhinged vigilantes instead of, say, doing the shadow work.

Alter egos don’t just show what characters fear—they show what they secretly want: power, escape, freedom from polite society. It’s the part of them that isn’t okay with playing nice anymore. It’s also the part that starts the fires and says “oops” later.

Holmes and Moriarty: A Gentleman’s Guide to Mutual Obsession

Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are technically enemies. But let’s be honest: they’re intellectual soulmates with unresolved tension and no HR department to report to. If Holmes is logic in a waistcoat, Moriarty is chaos in a cravat. One solves crimes. The other is the crime.

Holmes says he’s repulsed by Moriarty’s criminal mind. But let’s call it what it is: obsession. Like, we-should-talk-about-this-in-couples-therapy obsession.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” – Nietzsche again, because of course.

Their final tango at Reichenbach Falls? That’s not a climax—it’s a breakup scene disguised as a death drop.

Werewolves, Hulks, and People Who Should Not Be Left Unsupervised

Let’s talk about werewolves: the OG metaphor for “Oops, my emotions got out.” Classic lit was obsessed with this stuff. Guy seems chill—until the moon rises and suddenly he’s shirtless, hairy, and eating villagers. It’s like puberty, but worse.

And then there’s Bruce Banner. Poor guy just wants to be left alone to do his science. But noooo—every time someone provokes him, he turns into a giant green rage machine in cut-off jeans. He told them not to make him angry. They did. Now there’s structural damage.

Each transformation screams what Carl Jung quietly suggested:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Which is a very classy way of saying, “Congrats, you’re the werewolf now.”

But let’s not forget—masks don’t just hide. Sometimes they liberate.

“The mask is the instrument of the power that makes one see and speak.” – Michel Foucault

In other words: sometimes putting on the cape, the claws, or the face paint isn’t about hiding who you are—it’s about finally saying what you were never allowed to. That’s why Batman isn’t just Bruce in costume. He’s Bruce off-leash.

The real question is: when the mask comes off… what’s left?

Revenge: It’s Like Therapy, But With Body Counts

Here’s the thing about revenge stories: they used to be neat and tidy. Somebody wrongs you, you plot, you avenge, you feel… better? At least that’s how it worked in the classics. The Count of Monte Cristo is the gold standard of “I was wrongfully imprisoned, now I’m back with receipts.”

But modern revenge stories? Oh, they’re emotionally messy. There’s no neat payoff. Just guilt, trauma, and a long trail of ex-friends.

Walter White didn’t just want to “provide for his family.” He wanted to feel like the universe owed him something—and when it didn’t pay up, he became the universe’s problem. Watching him morph into Heisenberg is like watching your dad get really into crypto and start calling himself an “alpha.”

Amanda Clarke from Revenge isn’t much better. She goes full Machiavelli in heels. She infiltrates high society to take down the people who framed her dad—and in the process, slowly turns into one of them. You know it’s bad when even your revenge plot has subplots.

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” – Confucius (or at least the internet version of him)

Revenge doesn’t heal. It haunts. And if your therapist charges $200 an hour, revenge charges your soul.

Why Can’t We Be More Like Shaft?

Let’s take a breather from all the tortured brooding and talk about someone who handles his business without spiraling into an existential crisis every five minutes: John Shaft.

Shaft is revenge fiction’s cool older cousin who doesn’t need an alter ego because he’s already whole. He doesn’t slip into madness, grow claws, or adopt a second name—he just walks into a room, says something smooth, and gets stuff done. No inner monologue. No moral agony. Just grit, justice, and style.

Here’s what makes Shaft different: he’s angry, sure—but he owns it. His anger doesn’t consume him; it fuels him. He doesn’t lose himself in vengeance because he never lets anyone else define who he is. He knows the system is broken. He knows justice is often DIY. But he doesn’t get lost in it. He stays Shaft—and somehow makes leather trench coats look like emotional armor.

Honestly? Watching most of these fictional characters unravel, you start to wonder:

*Are psychiatrists who Curtis Mayfield was talking about in his classic song “I’m Your Pusherman”?
Because half these people don’t need a gun—they need a prescription and a twice-weekly check-in with someone who says:

“Know thyself.” – Socrates, probably side-eyeing half the MCU right now.

And here’s the kicker: Shaft doesn’t need a mask to be powerful. He doesn’t hide behind a symbol. He is the symbol. While most characters fracture under the weight of dual identities, Shaft walks in fully integrated—what Foucault might call power without disguise.

“Power is not an institution, and not a structure… it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation.” – Foucault, probably watching Shaft with admiration and fear.

Shaft is the complex strategical situation. Everyone else is just playing dress-up.

Final Thoughts: You vs. You (And Sometimes a Werewolf)

At the end of the day, alter egos and revenge stories aren’t really about villains. They’re about us—our insecurities, our grudges, our late-night fantasies of telling someone off and walking away in slow motion while something explodes in the background.

These stories hit because they remind us how hard it is to be a person. A person with baggage. With rage we swallow. With wounds we dress up as ambition. We all want to believe we’d be the Shaft in our own story—cool, unshakable, morally centered with a killer soundtrack—but let’s be honest: most of us are two stressful emails away from turning into Mr. Hyde.

“Where there is power, there is resistance.” – Foucault

Whether it’s the beast inside, the grief-fueled vendetta, or the charming psychopath in your mirror, every character in these stories is resisting something: society, morality, themselves.

And some of them lose.

Most of them do.

But then there’s Shaft—no split self, no mask, no melodrama. Just a man who knows the system’s rigged, knows who he is, and shows up anyway.

Maybe that’s the real power.
Maybe the rest of us are just monologuing in the dark.

The Harlem Hellfighters

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ARTICLE – MINI BIOGRAPHY – MILITARY HISTORY

While serving in the military, I never heard of these guys. Once I got out, I started researching military units during wartime. I came across this picture, and it just intrigued me. I have hours of data about this unit and others like it. I thought I would share a very quick overview of this amazing collection of men.

The Harlem Hellfighters, officially known as the 369th Infantry Regiment, were a remarkable group of African American soldiers who served with distinction during World War I. Despite facing racism and segregation in the United States, these courageous men showcased exceptional bravery and resilience on the battlefield, earning respect and admiration from both allies and enemies.

Formed in 1913, the 369th Infantry Regiment was originally a New York National Guard unit. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Harlem Hellfighters were among the first African American units to be sent to Europe. However, due to racial prejudices prevailing at the time, they were assigned to the French Army under the command of General Philippe Petain.

The Harlem Hellfighters served on the front lines for 191 days, more time in continuous combat than any other American unit during World War I. They faced intense fighting in the trenches, enduring not only the perils of war but also racism from their fellow citizens. Despite the challenges, they demonstrated exceptional courage in battles such as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, where they fought tirelessly to overcome the enemy.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Harlem Hellfighters’ legacy is their introduction of jazz music to Europe. The regiment’s band, led by Lieutenant James Reese Europe, played a significant role in popularizing this uniquely American art form abroad. Their performances entertained both troops and civilians, breaking down cultural barriers and contributing to the global recognition of jazz as a vibrant and influential genre.

The Harlem Hellfighters returned home as heroes, but their fight for equality did not end on the battlefield. Their experiences in World War I played a pivotal role in the broader struggle for civil rights in the United States. The recognition of their sacrifices and achievements contributed to the eventual desegregation of the military and laid the groundwork for the African American soldiers who would follow in their footsteps.

In 2019, a century after their heroic service, the Harlem Hellfighters were posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, further acknowledging their contributions and sacrifices. Their legacy remains an integral part of American history, serving as a testament to the strength, resilience, and courage of those who fought for justice and equality, both on and off the battlefield.

Real American Heroes

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What’s your favorite cartoon?

DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE

I watched so many cartoons as a child I can’t remember them all. Of course, the classics like Scrooby-Do and Bugs Bunny. However, there was one cartoon that appeared later. GI-Joe ended up being my jam. It might have sparked from having the action figure GI Joe with the kung-fu grip. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed every episode I was able to catch. What’s cool is that YouTube has all the episodes.