SOURCE: Cohn, Deborah. “To See or Not to See: Invisibility, Clairvoyance, and Re-visions of History in Invisible Man and La casa de los espíritus.” Comparative Literature Studies 33, no. 4 (1996): 372-95.

In the following essay, Cohn compares the literary techniques of Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man and Allende in La casa de los espíritus, examining their respective treatment of the marginalization of social groups.

My job becomes how to rip that veil drawn over “proceedings too terrible to relate.” The exercise is also critical for any person who is black, or who belongs to any marginalized category, for, historically, we were seldom invited to participate in the discourse even when we were its topic.

Toni Morrison, “The Site of Memory”

From riot to revolution and Harlem to Santiago, the distance that separates Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) from Isabel Allende's La casa de...