Wrestling with the Left

“Impeccably scholarly and full of imaginative surprises, Wrestling with the Left ranks with the most revealing criticism ever produced on Ralph Ellison. Nowhere else is the gestation of Invisible Man and the youngish intellectual who conceived it discussed so fully and incisively.”— - William J. Maxwell, author of New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism Between the Wars

“Seeking the truth (pro and con) about Ellison’s complex engagement with Communism, Barbara Foley has written a book indispensable to Ellison studies. She is a tireless scholar who has mastered, like no one before her, the daunting jungle of manuscripts that amply documents Ellison’s indebtedness to, and also his calculated later airbrushing of, the vitality and generosity of the radicals who nourished him on the long road to Invisible Man. Stern but fair, Barbara Foley is a shrewd, lively, lucid writer with a fascinating if controversial tale to tell. This book ably fills perhaps the biggest gap in our critical and biographical understanding of Ralph Ellison.” - Arnold Rampersad, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography

“Wrestling with the Left upends critical conversations about Ellison, Invisible Man, and the Communist legacy. By showing canonical interpretations of Invisible Man to be the politically-motivated discourses they are, Barbara Foley reopens rather than colonizes the question of Ralph Ellison’s politics. Any future attempts to wrestle with Ralph Ellison and his visions of Black identity, culture, art, history, and American society would do well to emulate the unapologetic political commitment and clarity of purpose of Foley’s work. ” - Nathaniel Mills, Against the Current

“[A] compelling, detailed work. . . . Recommended.” - A. Hirsh, Choice

“Fans of Ralph Ellison must put Barbara Foley’s Wrestling with the Left on their reading list. This substantial critical study, some fifteen years in the making, returns to early drafts of Invisible Man to offer a bold new reading of one of the most acclaimed American novels of the twentieth century.... After Foley’s analysis of the material in Ellison’s drafts, one in fact gains an even greater appreciation for the richness and complexity of what remains one of the great works of American literature.” - Brian Dolinar, African American Review

"We are not likely to get a more capacious and visionary political re-reading—or re-writing—of Invisible Man."  - Bill Mullen, Science & Society

“Wrestling with the Left is profoundly significant. It is a monumental, scrupulously researched, solidly argued reading of Invisible Man, a novel central to the history and teaching of African American literature and American modernism.” - Dan Colson, Modern Fiction Studies

“Foley is careful, lucid, thorough, and fair, and her book stands as a strong corrective to more reductive readings of Ellison’s novel and of his life.” - Alan Nadel, American Literature