“If you can show me how I can cling to that which is real to me, while teaching me a way into the larger society, then I will not only drop my defenses and my hostility, but I will sing your praises and help you to make the desert bear fruit.”

—  Ralph Ellison

"What These Children Are Like" (1963), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 555.

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Ralph Ellison82
American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer 1914–1994

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