SOURCE: "The Writer," in Continuity and Change in Latin America, edited by John J. Johnson, Stanford University Press, 1964, pp. 79-100.

Ellison is an American educator and the author of several books on Latin American literature. In the following essay, he evaluates the role and status of the writer in Latin American society and politics.

The writers of Latin America are, like their counterparts everywhere, intellectuals, who, in Edward A. Shils' definition, are particularly "enquiring, and desirous of being in frequent communion with symbols which are more general than the immediate concrete situations of everyday life, and remote in their reference in both time and place" ["The Intellectuals and the Powers," Comparative Studies in Society and History, I (Oct. 1958)]. Such men have social influence out of proportion to their relatively small number. They may be members of the liberal professions, educators, priests, administrators, lawmakers, historians, writers, artists, or musicians...