Ishmael Reed

Poet

• Born: February 22, 1938
• Birthplace: Chattanooga, Tennessee

Writer

Best known for his irreverent and politically pointed novels, Reed also spent time in academia and as editor of a literary magazine. He published collections of poetry and essays and is the author of several plays.

Areas of achievement: Education; Journalism and publishing; Literature; Poetry; Radio and television

Early Life

Ishmael Scott Reed was born on February 22, 1938, to Henry Lenoir and Tiielnia Coleman in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before he was two years old, his mother remarried an automobile worker named Bernie Reed. The family moved to Buffalo, New York, where Reed’s mother found work in a factory.

Reed graduated from East High School in 1956. He began attending night school at the University of Buffalo and supported himself by working in the public library system. He continued at the university until 1960, when financial difficulties forced him to withdraw. Reed then moved into Buffalo’s Talbert Mall Projects. The two years he lived there exposed him to the harsh realities of life in the urban ghetto.

During this period, Reed acted in local theater, wrote for the Empire Star Weekly, and hosted an often controversial radio show on WFVO. In 1962, he moved to New York City and became active in the Civil Rights movement and Black Power movement. He became the editor of the Newark, New Jersey, weekly newspaper Advance. Reed’s work there attracted the interest ofWalter Bowart. Together with three or four others, Bowart and Reed founded one of the first counterculture underground newspapers, The East Village Other. Reed also was instrumental in organizing the 1965 American Festival of Negro Art in New York.

Reed moved to Berkeley, California, in 1967 and began teaching at the University of California. He was denied tenure but continued to teach there and, at various times, the University of Washington, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Yale, and Dartmouth. He founded his own publishing company in 1971 and published the Yardbird Reader with Al Young from 1971 through 1976. Reed founded other publishing companies in 1973 and 1976.

Life’s Work

Reed’s novels form the bulk of his literary work. Beginning with his 1967 work The Free-Lance Pallbearers, the novels form a continuous attack on the nature of politics in the United States and the hypocrisy of those who claim to work for the interests of the African American population. Reed’s stories feature African American legends and ancient myths. Two of them, Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), feature a millennium-old private eye named Papa LaBas who is privy to ancient voodoo and other magic. Both of these novels hint at a conspiracy by members of the white establishment to keep African Americans fighting among themselves. The novel Flight to Canada(1976) examines slavery in the American South while slyly satirizing stories like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its eponymous narrator.

Reed’s later novels satirize modern academia, President Ronald Reagan’s coronation as “The Great Communicator,” and the reactionary politics of the Reagan era. Reed’s 1986 novel Reckless Eyeballing drew the wrath of some feminists and Jewish Americans who felt that Reed had claimed the literary establishment was controlled by women and Jews. However, a closer reading reveals Reed’s target as the cultural establishment that uses stereotypes to oppress African Americans, especially men. This premise is in line with themes present in all of Reed’s novels.

Reed combines traditional African American literary forms such as the slave narrative with other classical forms, creating a style that simultaneously parodies and legitimizes itself. He uses African and African American versions of universal motifs like the trickster to expose society’s hidden evils. Reed also manipulates other classical motifs to represent and satirize white society. His writing, which has been compared to the music of jazz legend Charlie Parker, echoes the rhythms and cadence of African American dialect and street slang. Thematically, Reed’s novels revolve around the nature of artistic freedom and its role in human liberation and expression. Acutely aware of repression and oppression in place throughout the history of African Americans, Reed attacks the predominantly white, male power structure.

Through humor and vivid characterizations, Reed’s novels examine the divide-and-conquer tactics employed by that power structure to pit women against men, old against young, and African Americans against each other. At the same time, he implicitly criticizes the willingness of those being manipulated to go along with those tactics. The line between reality and unreality is never clear in Reed’s novels. Men and women exist in different time periods and occasionally assume multiple identities. Myth and history combine to create stories that synthesize both into a new narrative.

Reed’s novels are just one part of his output. His poetry has appeared in several journals and collections. His plays have been performed on stages across the United States and in Europe. His essays have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies. These works maintain Reed’s attack on the hypocrisy of American society, especially in its relationship to African Americans. His essays have drawn the ire of other African American writers and intellectuals whose works have been more accepted by the dominant culture—the same culture Reed lampoons in his novels.

Reed’s works have been set to music and performed by more than two dozen musicians and performers, ranging from jazz violinist Billy Bang to Mary Wilson of the Supremes. He won several literary honors and awards, including writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, the Langston Hughes Medal, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship award. Reed’s publishing ventures were founded with the goal of giving nonwhite writers a chance to gain readership. He served as editor of his online journal Conch and head of the publishing imprint Ishmael Reed Publishing Company. Reed retired from teaching at the University of California at Berkeley in 2005.

Significance

Reed’s critique of the racial stratification of American cultural, economic, and political life is just one aspect of his writing. Underlying all of Reed’s work is his understanding of the importance of artistic expression and the ability to freely exercise it. His novels, poems, essays, and plays are attempts to expose the disadvantages African Americans face in American society while simultaneously rejecting those disadvantages. His commitment to providing nonwhite writers with a forum represents another way to combat inequalities.

Bibliography

Dick, Bruce, and Amritjit Singh, eds. Conversations with Ishmael Reed. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. Contains four hundred pages of interviews covering Reed’s explanations of the themes he addresses in his fictional works.

Reed, Ishmael. “Media Diet: Ishmael Reed.” Interview by Andy Steiner. The Utne Reader 89 (September/October, 1998): 94. In this brief interview, Reed discusses some of his influences, favorite authors and musicians, and inspirations.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections. New York: Da Capo Press, 2008. Reed’s acerbic writing is on display here as he takes on American race relations, culture, economics, and media portrayals of these phenomena.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Reed Reader. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Includes excerpts from nine novels, several essays and a couple poems. Edited by Reed himself, this collection serves as a good introduction to his writing and his worldview.