Invisibility+in+America

= "I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me...When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." --Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man (pg.3) =

[|Cite] ==== "There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked has given them color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it." --Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter (pg.72) ====

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We celebrate their days,

eat hot dogs, love baseball,

but they say we were born to weed,

change diapers, carry crates in the grey of dawn

while they sleep. Awake, they look at us without seeing.

We see ourselves clearly, know ourselves

precisely, without parades and picnics.

To survive, we must.

I'm one of the invisible living among the notable.

Day after day I hear doors shut,

stumble over slurs, and bump into the man

who nods yes, yes, but isn't listening. --Renato Rosaldo  [|Cite] [|Cite]

==== "I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a sate of hibernation." --Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man (pg.6) ==== [|Cite]

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