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BACK TO MAIN ISHMAEL REED PAGE
The Freelance Pallbearers (1967)
Bukka Doopeyduk launches a rebellion in the miserable nation of Harry Sam, ruled by the despotic Harry Sam.
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969)
A traveling circus group and their adventure in the Old West. The hero of the book is the Loop Garoo Kid, a black circus cloven hoofed hoo-doo cowboy with quick wit, a cool disposition, and a silver tongue. He is traveling with the circus barker, a dancing bear 86-D, and Zozo Labrique, a hoo-doo\voo-doo princes from New Orleans who performs magic after being thrown out of her church. Upon arriving in Yellow Back Radio, which is the town's name, the group discovers their advance man dead, and strung up from a tree. The group gives him a proper burial and proceeds into the town. Upon arriving there they discover that all the adults of the town had been driven out, and the children are now in control of the town. The adults are currently camped out at the spread of the anti-hero Drag Gibson. Drag and his men poisoned the towns water supply with mind altering drugs that caused the adults to fear the children and sign their land over to him.
The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974)
novel set amid the 1960s racial violence of Berkeley, Calif.
Flight to Canada (1976)
an American Civil War-era slave escaping to freedom via bus and airplane
Tell My Horse (1990)
Zora Neal Hurston and Ishmael Reed.
Based on Zora Neale Hurston's personal experience in Haiti and
Jamaica as an initiate, this travelogue into a dark world paints
a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies, customs, and supersititions
of great cultural interest.
Japanese by Spring (1993)
Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black junior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt academic dean, the fun really begins as Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores. Here is Puttbutt describing Ishmael Reed, himself: "Historically, when whites moved among yellows, blacks and reds, death always resulted...Reed believed that racism was learned. That racism was the result of white leaders of western nations placing little value on non-white life, or indeed, projecting violent impulses upon those who lived under constant fear of white terror."
A collection of essays, 36 in toto, spanning his career from 1978 to 1983; about half of the essays have been previously published in various periodicals. The "pilloring of black males," a phrase he uses in one of the pieces, could be taken as the theme that stitches all of them together. Reed's anger is tempered, but barely, as he addresses such specific topics as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings and the Rodney King trial and such African American figures as writer John Edgar Wideman and boxer Muhammad Ali. But the ax he grinds is bigger than any particular subject matter: his chief bugbear being the double standard by which black behavior is judged vis-{}a-vis white behavior, not only in the white-dominated media but in the white public mind.
Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards 1980-1990.
Ishmael Reed, Shawn Young, Kate Trueblood: Since 1976 the Before Columbus Foundation has been devoted to the task of redefining our notion of "mainstream" American literature to reflect this country's multicultural, multi-ethnic richness and diversity. Since 1980 it has sponsored the American Book Awards. This anthology includes 30 selections from a decade of award-winning fiction.
Multi-America
Multi-America is an unprecedented, unpredictable and absolutely refreshing anthology. Ishmael Reed has brought together a rainbow collection of ethnic Americans to challenge the communications oligopolies that have dominated the discussion of race in this country. It provides perspectives from points of view that have been omitted from the discussion of race in the United States: African American, Native American, Asian American and Euro-ethnic, Italian American, Irish American, etc. These marginalized voices speak out on a broad spectrum of topics: an Irish American discusses what has been lost in assimilation; an Afrocentrist responds to the one-sided depiction of Afrocentrism; Latinos discuss the violent racial conflicts between blacks and Latinos. They represent, for the first time, the authentic voice of the new Rainbow America.
Dark Eros