"Uncle Tom Is Dead!": Wright, Himes, and Ellison Lay a Mask to Rest.

UNCLE Tom's Cabin (Book : Stowe); UNCLE Tom's Children (Book); HEAVEN Has Changed (Short story); INVISIBLE Man (Book : Ellison); STOWE, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896; WRIGHT, Richard, 1908-1960; HIMES, Chester B., 1909-1984; ELLISON, Ralph, 1914-1994; UNCLE Tom (Fictional character); RACIAL identity of African Americans; AFRICAN Americans -- Intellectual life; TWENTIETH century

This article discusses three texts by African American authors that critique the cultural legacy of the 19th-century novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe: the short story collection "Uncle Tom's Children" (1938) by Richard Wright; the short story "Heaven Has Changed" (1943) by Chester Himes; and the first chapter of "Invisible Man" (1952) by Ralph Ellison. The object of critique is seen not as the literary character Uncle Tom, but the cultural practice of "masking" undertaken by blacks to achieve acceptance by whites.