Musician Chloe Charles on the novel that helped her understand her father

Chloe Charles is a Canadian musician based in Berlin and Toronto, whose latest album is With Blindfolds On. She's been cited as an artist to watch by Billboard magazine and Guitar World, and right now she's reading Ralph Ellison's celebrated 1952 novel Invisible Man. This interview originally aired on April 25, 2016.

This book really resonates with me because it's the story of a black man in the '20s and '30s who feels invisible because of his race and pre-judged by people because of the way he looks. It's his journey navigating through New York in this time. 

As a mixed-race women in the music industry, I've often felt very invisible and pre-judged by people. This is definitely a theme for any minority and it doesn't seem to end just because we're in the 21st century. I find it really important to read these novels, to remember. My father moved from Trinidad to London. He never talked about it, but I think that being a black man was very hard for him because people immediately judged who he was. So he created this character and he lived it until he passed away, and it always seemed like a cloak — it didn't really seem like the real person. It seemed like he realized that he was invisible and that he had to create a new person in order for people to see him. Sometimes it was very strange for me, getting to know him that way and watching how he interacted with people. He was very charming, but to me it seemed that in a way he ran away from his history and from black culture. This book for me is an interesting way to look at some of my history and those themes of invisibility and race relations.

Chloe Charles' comments have been edited and condensed.