Ishmael Reed

The Classic Freewheeling Look at Race Relations Through the Ages Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed's brilliantly satiric deconstruction of Western civilization, a racy and uproarious commentary on our society. In it, Reed, one of our preeminent African-American authors, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture.

Mumbo Jumbo

“That’s a lot of horse hockey, Hamilton.” Described by the New York Times as “classic activist theater” and “a cross between ‘A Christmas Carol’ and a trial at The Hague’s International Criminal Court.” "In this, his latest work, the protean Ishmael Reed--the legendary artist and prolific writer--continues to burnish his already sterling reputation by dismantling the 'Creation Myth' of the founding of the U.S., as represented in the incredibly profitable play and musical, Hamilton. Reed, a verbal acrobat of global renown, demonstrates here why he is widely considered to be the leading intellectual in the U.S. today." -Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the USA This powerful play, originally produced at the Nuyorican Poets Café, comprehensively dismantles the phenomenon of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Hamilton. Reed uses the musical’s crimes against history to insist on a radical, cleareyed way of looking at our past and our selves. Both durable and timely, this goes beyond mere corrective – it is a meticulously researched rebuttal, an absorbing drama, and brilliant rallying cry for justice. The perfect tie-in to both the success of and backlash to Hamilton, it is the major voice in contrast to the recent movie. It captures both the earnest engagement that fans of the musical desire, as well as the exhausted disbelief of those who can’t stand it. Teachers, students and fans of drama, literature, and history will find much to love. It is written by one of America’s most respected and original writers, who is eagerly promoting it, and who is long overdue for a renaissance.

The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda

"Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women. A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry and the most powerful of cattlemen shed his head to the Executioner's swine." And so begins the HooDoo Western by Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and one of America's most innovative and celebrated writers. Reed demolishes white American history and folklore as well as Christian myth in this masterful satire of contemporary American life. In addition to the black, satanic Loop Garoo Kid, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down features Drag Gibson (a rich, slovenly cattleman), Mustache Sal (his nymphomaniac mail-order bride), Thomas Jefferson and many others in a hilarious parody of the old Western.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-down

Celebrated novelist, poet, and MacArthur fellow Ishmael Reed pushes the boundaries once again in the publication of From Totems to Hip Hop—a truly all-inclusive multicultural anthology—a literary event which will finally even the playing field. This important collection synthesizes and presents broad swaths of work from poets of all races and backgrounds, as only Reed can, ranging from Gertrude Stein to Ai, from Bessie Smith to Askia Toure, from W. C. Handy to the little-known poetry of Ernest Hemingway. Through his unique position in American letters, as writer, teacher, and even publisher, Reed has an unparalleled working knowledge of many of the more marginalized voices in American poetry. This collection will reflect that unique access by including acknowledged masters as well as lesser known talents in greater variety than any previous anthology. From Totems to Hip Hop will cover American poetry from its pre-Columbian origins to the hip hop lyricists of today and, with the guidance of Reed's thoughtful and provocative introduction and headnotes, trace the remarkably rich cross-pollination which has continually occurred across racial and cultural lines.

A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002

From Totems to Hip-Hop

Malcolm and Me

A comically surreal, bitingly ironic account of the Civil War as seen by three runaway slaves illuminates the political consciences of both blacks and whites through a mixture of history, fantasy, and today's political realities. Reprint.

Flight to Canada

A new novel from the most outspoken African-American writer of our time. In 2010, the Newseum in Washington D.C. finally obtained the suit O. J. Simpson wore in court the day he was acquitted, and it now stands as both an artifactin their “Trial of the Century” exhibit and a symbol of the American media’s endless hunger for the criminal and the celebrity. This event serves as a launching point for Ishmael Reed’s Juice!, a novelistic commentary on the post-Simpson American media frenzy from one of the most controversial figures in American literature today. Through Paul Blessings—a censored cartoonist suffering from diabetes—and his cohorts—serving as stand-ins for the various mediums of art—Ishmael Reed argues that since 1994, “O. J. has become a metaphor for things wrong with culture and politics.” A lament for the death of print media, the growth of the corporation, and the process of growing old, Juice! serves as a comi-tragedy, chronicling the increased anxieties of “post-race” America.

Juice! (American Literature Series)

"For all the talk of the black aesthetic, few black novelists have broken sharply with the traditional devices of the realistic novel. One writer who departs from such conventions, however, is Ishmael Reed. . . . The Free-Lance Pallbearers uses an explosive combination of straightforward English prose, exaggerated black dialect, hip jargon, advertising slogans and long, howling uppercase screams." Newsweek

The Free-lance Pallbearers

Oakland is a blues city, brawling and husky . . . Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its twinkling sister city across the Bay, Oakland is itself an American wonder. The city is surrounded by and filled with natural beauty—mountains and hills and lakes and a bay—and architecture that mirrors its history as a Spanish mission, Gold Rush outpost, and home of the West’s most devious robber barons. It’s also a city of artists and blue-collar workers, the birthplace of the Black Panthers, neighbor to Berkeley, and home to a vibrant and volatile stew of immigrants and refugees. In Blues City, Ishmael Reed, one of our most brilliant essayists, takes us on a tour of Oakland, exploring its fascinating history, its beautiful hills and waterfronts, and its odd cultural juxtapositions. He takes us into a year in the life of this amazing city, to black cowboy parades and Indian powwows, to Black Panther reunions and Gay Pride concerts, to a Japanese jazz club where a Lakota musician plays Coltrane’s “Naima.” Reed provides a fascinating tour of an un-tamed, unruly western outpost set against the backdrop of political intrigues, ethnic rivalries, and a gentrification-obsessed mayor, opening our eyes not only to a singular city, but to a newly emerging America.

A Walk in Oakland

Blues City

The greatest and most fearless living writer turns his unerring eye to the art world and the fraught relationship between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. The relationship between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat is already one of the most iconic, intensely analyzed partnerships in the history of art. Ishmael Reed, perhaps America's greatest living writer, brings the same unsparing, deeply researched perspective as he did for the Archway Editions bestseller The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, for a captivating, illuminating final word on the famous duo. Already the subject of controversy during its original run at the Theater for the New City in the East Village, Archway Editions is proud to bring you the unabridged text of The Slave Who Loved Caviar, Ishmael Reed’s latest feat of research and drama, the tragedy as disturbingly real for today’s artists as it was in the 1980’s.

The Slave Who Loved Caviar

Japanese by Spring

The Fool Who Though Too Much

"The Last Days of Louisiana Red blends paradox, hyperbole, understatement and signifyin' so expertly you can almost hear a droll black voice telling the tales as you read it." The New Republic

The Last Days of Louisiana Red

Masochism is out and feminism is in, Jews are out and Germans are in, race is out and gender is in, and everyone's fighting (and rewriting) for a piece of the pie. Jewish director Jim Minsk disappears during a trip to the South. Black playwright Ian Ball writes the all-female play Reckless Eyeballing in hopes of getting off the "sex-list." Preeminent playwright Jack Brashford, claiming the Jews stole all his black material, decides to write about Armenians. In the background, an unknown assailant dubbed the "Flower Phantom" runs loose through the city shaving heads of prominent black feminists (to the secret delight of black men).In this hilarious, devastating, but also deeply sympathetic novel, Ishmael Reed turns characters on the backs, sides, tops and bottoms to expose the multiple hypocrisies at the heart of American culture.

Reckless Eyeballing

Harlem, années 1920. PaPa LaBas, détective et sorcier « néo-houdouiste », est engagé dans une lutte contre l’Ordre de la Fleur de muraille. Les membres de ce mouvement suprémaciste veulent éradiquer un mal mystérieux nommé Djeuze Grou – une sorte de virus qui se propagerait par la danse et la musique noires, menaçant selon eux de renverser l’Amérique blanche. Pour contrer leurs sinistres desseins, PaPa LaBas se met en quête du mythique Livre sacré de Djeuze Grou, dont on dit qu’il serait détenu par le séculaire ordre des Templiers. Entre parodie de polar et de quête initiatique, allégorie politique, grand carnaval entremêlant les références historiques, mythologiques, littéraires, folkloriques et musicales, Mumbo Jumbo dresse le portrait prophétique d’une Amérique livrée aux démons du racisme et du conspirationnisme. Un roman culte qui a inspiré toute une génération d’artistes, de Thomas Pynchon à Colson Whitehead en passant par George Clinton.

Shawn Wong

Kathryn Trueblood

Presents a decade's worth of work by such writers as James Welch, Kay Boyle, Toni Morrison, Frank Chin, Sandra Cisneros, and Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn

Selections from the American Book Awards, 1980-1990

The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology

Sonia Sanchez

Thylias Moss

Afaa Michael Weaver

Martin Espada

rita dove

Patricia Spears Jones

An anthology of poems addressing the issue of violence against African-Americans.

Poems to Stretch the Sky

Resisting Arrest

Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon

Ishmael Reed hat sich für seine bissige Gesellschaftssatire einen der verlogensten Höhepunkte kommerzialisierten Lebens herausgesucht: das Geschäft mit dem Weihnachtsmann. Der unerträgliche Gegensatz zwischen Arm und Reich in den nordamerikanischen Großstädten, die unbekümmerte Mentalität der Amerikaner, die von den Medien beherrschte Kultur auf Disneyland-Niveau, die militante Frauenbewegung – alles das überzeichnet Reed so böse und grell, daß die Absurdität der Phänomene anschaulich wird. (Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine frühere Ausgabe.)

Roman

Die Weihnachtsmann-Connection

In this latest collection of essays, culled from the pages of the New York Times, Playboy, CounterPunch, and elsewhere, MacArthur fellow Ishmael Reed is at his most probing and fearless. Reed tackles subjects ranging from Oakland, eugenics, and domestic violence to the way gentrification is causing us to lose Black Harlem; and from the media portrayals of Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant to a profile of legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. The collection also includes his landmark essay in the Baltimore Sun, in which he was the first writer to label Bill Clinton a ''black'' president. In this important and stunning collection, one of America's most forceful and ever-surprising commentators paints a complex portrait of the media and its place in American culture.

Ishmael Reed

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