Ralph Ellison: The Soul Of A Marxist – A Lecture By Quraysh Ali Lansana

Ralph Ellison, author of what many consider to be the greatest American novel of the 20th Century, was a complicated man. Brilliant, yet complex. Born in 1914 in the deeply segregated neighborhood of Oklahoma City known as “Deep Deuce,” Ellison experienced the poverty and struggle of racism before he could read and experienced profound tragedy at two-years of age.  A multi-talented, curious boy into young manhood, Ellison was immersed in both the second-hand welfare and first-hand rage of White people. As Ellison experienced success he possessed a seriousness, a soberness, and what some Black Arts Movement considered a pompous disposition. How could Ralph Ellison be both a socialist and an elitist at the same time?

Scholar and poet Quraysh Ali Lansana visits Dallas for a lecture on the tension between Ellison’s private thoughts and history and his public success and renown.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of over twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and a Visiting Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa. He was formerly a Lecturer in Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa where he also served as Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody Award nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters Award and a 2022 National Educational Telecommunications Association Public Media Award for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today magazine. A former faculty member of both the Writing Program of the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago
and the Drama Division of
The Juilliard School, Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center
for Black Literature and
Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2012 and was Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing there until 2014. His most recent books include Killing the Negative: A Conversation in Art & Verse (with Joel Daniel Phillips), Opal’s Greenwood Oasis, the skin of dreams: new and collected poems, 1995-2018, The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience & Change Agent) and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop.

Forthcoming titles include a children’s biography of Ralph Ellison, a memoir on the last decade of his mentor, Miss Gwendolyn Brooks, and a series of books on the Black Rodeo. Lansana’s work appears in Best American Poetry 2019. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Oklahoma Humanities and the Tulsa Press Club. Lansana is a Curatorial Scholar for The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art and a Curatorial Board Co-Chair for the Ragdale Foundation. He is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of the first cohort of the Culture of Health Leadership for Racial Healing Fellowship.