Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his Satire works challenging American political culture.
Early life, family and college drop out
Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved to Buffalo, New York, when he was a child, during the Great Migration.
After attending local schools, Reed attended the University at Buffalo, though he withdrew from college in his junior year, partly for financial reasons, but mainly because he felt he needed a new atmosphere to support his writing and music. He said of this decision, "This was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time because I was able to continue experimenting along the lines I wanted, influenced by Nathanael
Nathanael West and others. I didn't want to be a slave to somebody else's reading lists. I kind of regret the decision now because I've gotten some of the most racist and horrible things said to me because of this".
Reed said in a 2022 interview for World Literature Today: "I come from a family of Tennessee fighters. Like my mother, who was abandoned and had to make do with her skills. She organized two strikes. One of the strikes was of the maids at a hotel in Buffalo. The other was at a department store, where the Black women were assigned to do stock work and the white women were salespersons. She became the first Black salesperson as a result of the strike. She wrote a book I deeply admire called Black Girl from Tannery Flats. But when she died, her achievement was that she became a salesperson. She was a fighter."
Career
In 1962, Reed moved to the Lower East Side of New York City, and founded
Advance, a community newspaper for Newark, New Jersey,
as well as co-founding with
Walter Bowart the
East Village Other, which became a well-known underground publication.
Reed was also a member of the
Umbra poets (he attended his first Umbra meeting in Spring 1963, with others present including Lorenzo Thomas, Askia Touré, Charles Patterson, David Henderson, Albert Haynes, and
Calvin Hernton),
some of whose members helped establish the Black Arts Movement and promoted a Black Aesthetic.
Although Reed never participated in that movement, he has continued to research the history of black Americans. While working on his novel
Flight to Canada (1976), he coined the term "Neo-Slave narrative", which he used in 1984 in "A Conversation with Ishmael Reed" by Reginald Martin.
[ "A Conversation with Ishmael Reed By Reginald Martin" (interview conducted July 1–7, 1983, in Emeryville, California), The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 1984, Vol. 4.2. At Dalkey Archive Press.] During this time, Reed also made connections with musicians and poets such as
Sun Ra,
Cecil Taylor, and
Albert Ayler, which contributed to Reed's vast experimentation with jazz and his love for music.
Reed has served as editor and publisher of various small presses and journals since the early 1970s.[ Konch Magazine. An Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed Publication.] In 1970, Reed moved to the West Coast to begin teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 35 years, retiring from there in 2005.
Among the writers first published by Reed when they were students in his writing workshops are Terry McMillan, Mona Simpson, Mitch Berman, Kathryn Trueblood, Danny Romero, Fae Myenne Ng, Brynn Saito, Mandy Kahn, John Keene, and Frank B. Wilderson III.
Reed's archives are held by the Special Collections at the University of Delaware in Newark.[ Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.] established a three-year collaboration between the non-profit and Oakland-based Second Start Literacy Project in 1998.[ "SFJAZZ Laureates - Jim Goldberg & Ishmael Reed" , SF Jazz.] His poem "Just Rollin' Along", about the 1934 encounter between Bonnie and Clyde and Oakland Blues artist L. C. Good Rockin' Robinson, is included in The Best American Poetry 2019.[ "The Best American Poetry 2019" at Simon & Schuster.]
Influences
Speaking about his influences, Reed has said, "I've probably been more influenced by poets than by novelists—the Harlem Renaissance poets, the
Beat Generation, the American surrealist
Ted Joans. Poets have to be more attuned to originality, coming up with lines and associations the ordinary prose writer wouldn't think of."
Among writers from the Harlem Renaissance for whose work Reed has expressed admiration are
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston,
George Schuyler,
Bruce Nugent,
Countee Cullen,
Rudolph Fisher and
Arna Bontemps.
In Chris Jackson's interview of Reed in the Fall 2016 edition of
The Paris Review, Reed discusses many literary influences, including
Dante, the
Celtic Revival poets,
James Baldwin,
George Schuyler,
Nathanael West,
Bob Kaufman, and Charles Wright.
[Jackson, Chris (Fall 2016), "Ishmael Reed, The Art of Poetry No. 100", The Paris Review, No. 218.]
Style and themes
Reed said in a 2011 interview with
Parul Sehgal: "My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne."
[Sehgal, Parul (March 14, 2011), "Native Son: A Profile of Ishmael Reed", Publishers Weekly.] Reed has also been quoted as saying: "So this is what we want: to sabotage history. They won't know whether we're serious or whether we are writing fiction ... Always keep them guessing."
[Margaret Busby (October 21, 2000), "Do the Harlem shuffle", The Guardian.]
Conjugating Hindi was deeply compelled by Reed's ideas of depicting a unification of multiple cultures.
Music
Reed has been the central participant in the longest ongoing music/poetry collaboration, known as Conjure projects,
[Jon Pareles (September 21, 1983), "JAZZ: Ishmael Reed Songs", The New York Times.] produced by
Kip Hanrahan on American Clavé:
Conjure I (1984) and
Conjure II (1988), which were reissued by
Rounder Records in 1995; and
Conjure Bad Mouth (2005), whose compositions were developed in live Conjure band performances, from 2003 to 2004, including engagements at
Paris's Banlieues Bleues, London's
Barbican Centre, and the Blue Note Café in Tokyo. The
Village Voice ranked the 2005
Conjure CD one of four best spoken-word albums released in 2006.
In 2007, Reed made his debut as a jazz pianist and bandleader with For All We Know by The Ishmael Reed Quintet.[Singer, Olivia (February 17, 2019), "Wales Bonner", Vogue.] In 2008, Reed was honored as Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame Awards.[ "Paris: Questlove’s Afro-Picks", Red Bull Music Academy World Tour 2012, September 11, 2011.] In 2013, David Murray, with vocalists Macy Gray and Gregory Porter, released the CD Be My Monster Love, with three new songs with lyrics by Reed: "Army of the Faithful", "Hope is a Thing With Feathers", and the title track, "Be My Monster Love".
In 2022, Reed released his first album of original compositions, The Hands of Grace.
Personal life
In 1960, Reed married Priscilla Thompson. Their daughter, Timothy (1960–2021), was born the same year.
Timothy dedicated her semi-autobiographical book
Showing Out (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003) to her father. Reed and Thompson divorced in 1970.
Since 1970, he has been married to writer and teacher
Carla Blank. Their daughter, Tennessee, is also an author.
He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife of more than 50 years,
Carla Blank, a noted author, choreographer, and director.
[Carla Blank's latest publication is Storming the Old Boys' Citadel: Two Pioneer Women Architects of Nineteenth Century North America, Baraka Books, 2014, co-authored with Tania Martin. She is also author of Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900–2000, Three Rivers Press, 2003.]
Accolades
Bibliography
Novels and short fiction
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The Freelance Pallbearers, 1967
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Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, 1969
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Mumbo Jumbo, 1972
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The Last Days of Louisiana Red, 1974
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Flight to Canada, 1976
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The Terrible Twos, 1982
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Reckless Eyeballing, 1986
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The Terrible Threes, 1989
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Japanese by Spring, 1993
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Juice!, 2011
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Conjugating Hindi, 2018
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"The Fool Who Thought Too Much" (short story), 2020
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The Terrible Fours, 2021
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The Man Who Haunted Himself, 2022
Poetry and other collected works
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catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church, 1969
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Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon or D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful, 1970
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Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 1972
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Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970, 1972
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Chattanooga: Poems, 1973
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A Secretary to the Spirits, illustrated by Betye Saar, 1978
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New and Collected Poetry, 1988
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The Reed Reader, 2000
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New and Collected Poems, 1964–2006, 2006 (hardcover); New and Collected Poems, 1964–2007, 2007 (paperback)
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Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, 2020
Plays and librettos
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The Wild Gardens of the Loup Garou, with poetry by Reed and Colleen McElroy and music by Carman Moore (1981, 1989).
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Gethsemane Park, libretto; Carman Moore, composer (premiere, Berkeley Black Repertory Theater, 1998).
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Ishmael Reed, THE PLAYS, a collection of six plays published by Dalkey Archive Press (2009), as listed with date of premiere: Mother Hubbard (1979 and revised in 1997 into a musical version); Savage Wilds (1988 Part I; 1990, Part II); Hubba City (1989, 1994); The Preacher and the Rapper (1995); C Above C Above High C (1997); Body Parts (2007), a play developed from a work first performed as Tough Love (2004).
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The Final Version, premiered at the Nuyorican Poets Café in December 2013.
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Life Among the Aryans, premiered in full production at the Nuyorican Poets Café in June 2018. Archway Editions, 2022.
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The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, premiered in full production at the Nuyorican Poets Café in May 2019, published by Archway Editions in 2020.
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The Slave Who Loved Caviar, premiered in a virtual reading sponsored by the Nuyorican Poets Café in March 2021; a full production premiered December 23, 2021, at Theater for the New City. Archway Editions, October 2023.
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The Conductor, premiered in a full production at Theater for the New City on March 9, 2023, and returned for a second three-week run, August 24–September 10, 2023.
[ "New Play: THE CONDUCTOR", Ishmael Reed website.][ "The Conductor by Ishmael Reed" at Theater for the New City.]
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The Shine Challenge 2024, premiered as a virtual staged reading sponsored by the Nuyorican Poets Cafe through April 15, 2024.
[ "THE SHINE CHALLENGE, 2024 at Nuyorican Poets Cafe | Dates: (2/23/2024 - 4/15/2024)". Broadway World, Off-Off-Broadway.]
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The Shine Challenge 2025 premiered in a full production sponsored by Theater for the New City, January 30, 2025
[ "THE SHINE CHALLENGE 2025 at Theater for the New City", Broadway World, 2025.]
Non-fiction
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Shrovetide in Old New Orleans: Essays, Atheneum, 1978
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God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays, Garland, 1982
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Writin' Is Fightin': Thirty-seven Years of Boxing On Paper. New York: Atheneum, 1989
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Airing Dirty Laundry. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1993
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Oakland Rhapsody, The Secret Soul Of An American Downtown. Introduction and Commentary by Ishmael Reed and photographs by Richard Nagler. North Atlantic Books, 1995
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Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, Crown Journeys, 2003
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Another Day at the Front: Dispatches from the Race War, Basic Books, 2003
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Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections, Da Capo Press, 2008
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Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the "Nigger Breakers", Baraka Books, 2010
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Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown, Baraka Books, 2012
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The Complete Muhammad Ali, Baraka Books, July 2015
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"Jazz Musicians as Pioneer Multi-Culturalists, the Co-Optation of Them, and the Reason Jazz Survives" in American Multiculturalism in Context, Views from at Home and Abroad, edited by Sami Ludwig, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017, pp. 189–199
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Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, a collection of new and collected essays, Baraka Books, 2019
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Malcolm and Me, written and narrated by Reed, Audible, 2020
Anthologies edited by Reed
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19 Necromancers From Now, Doubleday & Co., 1970
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Calafia: The California Poetry, Yardbird Pub. Co., 1978,
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Yardbird Lives!, co-edited with Al Young, Grove Press, 1978,
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QUILT #1, Ishmael Reed & Al Young, 1981.
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QUILT #2, A special issue devoted to the stories of students at University of California Berkeley. Ishmael Reed & Al Young, 1981.
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The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology, Selections from the American Book Awards 1980–1990, co-edited with Kathryn Trueblood and Shawn Wong, W. W. Norton, 1991,
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The HarperCollins Literary Mosaic Series, General Editor of four anthologies edited by Gerald Vizenor, Shawn Wong, Nicolas Kanellos and Al Young, 1995–96
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MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, Viking/Penguin, 1997,
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From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2001, Da Capo Press, 2003,
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Pow Wow: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience, short fiction anthology, edited with Carla Blank, Da Capo Press, 2009,
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Black Hollywood Unchained, non-fiction anthology, edited and with an Introduction by Reed, Third World Press, October 2015,
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Bigotry on Broadway, co-edited with Carla Blank, with an Introduction by Reed, Baraka Books, September 2021
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The Plague Edition of Konch Magazine, co-edited with Tennessee Reed, Ishmael Reed Publishing Co., 2024
Forewords
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Signet Classic Edition, 2013)
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The Collected Novels of Charles Wright (Harper Perennial, 2019)
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Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade (Thames & Hudson, 2019)
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Surviving Financially in a Rigged System (Third World Press Foundation, 2019)
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John Oliver Killens's The Minister Primarily (Amistad, 2021)
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Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (2023)
[ "Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton", Wesleyan University Press, 2023.]
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John A. Williams' novel, The Man Who Cried I Am (Library of America, 2023)
[ "John A. Williams: The Man Who Cried I Am", Library of America.]
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Awol Erizku's Mystic Parallax (Aperture, 2023).
[ "Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax", Aperture.]
Filmography
Discography
Kip Hanrahan has released three albums featuring lyrics by Reed:
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Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed (American Clave, 1985)
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Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon (American Clave, 1985)
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Conjure: Bad Mouth (American Clave, 2005)
David Murray has released several albums featuring lyrics by Reed:
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Sacred Ground (Justin Time, 2007) – "Sacred Ground" and "The Prophet of Doom" sung by Cassandra Wilson
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The Devil Tried to Kill Me (Justin Time, 2009) – "The Devil Tried to Kill Me" sung by Sista Kee and "Africa" sung by Taj Mahal
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Be My Monster Love (Motéma, 2013) – "Be My Monster Love" sung by Macy Gray and "Army of the Faithful (Joyful Noise)" and "Hope Is a Thing with Feathers" sung by Gregory Porter
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blues for memo (Doublemoon Records, 2016) - "Red Summer" sung by Pervis Evans
Yosvany Terry has released one album including lyrics by Reed:
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New Throned Kings (SPassion 2014), CD nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award, with Ishmael Reed's lyrics on "Mase Nadodo".
Releases produced by Ishmael Reed
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His Bassist (Konch Records, Ishmael Reed, producer), featuring Ortiz Walton and including collaborations based on Reed's poetry, 2014
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For All We Know (Ishmael Reed Publishing, 2007) with the Ishmael Reed quintet, features David Murray (sax, bass clarinet and piano), and Carla Blank (violin), Roger Glenn (flute), Chris Planas (guitar), and Ishmael Reed (piano) on nine jazz standards, and three original collaborations with text by Reed and music composed by David Murray, were first performed by Ishmael Reed on this privately produced CD. David Murray then wrote different compositions for these Reed lyrics for the film and CD Sacred Ground.
Releases with music composed and performed by Ishmael Reed (piano)
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The Hands of Grace (Reading Group, 2022), with Roger Glenn (flute and sax), Ray Obiedo (guitar), Carla Blank (violin), Ronnie Stewart (electric guitar) and poet Tennessee Reed.
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Blues Lyrics by Ishmael Reed (Konch Records, 2023) with the West Coast Blues Caravan of All Stars: Art Hafen (trombone), Gregory "Gman" Simmons (bass), Michael Skinner (drums), Ronnie Stewart (drums and guitar), Michael Robinson (keyboard) with David Murray (saxophone) and Ishmael Reed (vocalist).
Selected public art installations
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1972: "from the files of agent 22", Reed's poem, was posted in New York City buses and subways, by Poetry in Public Places, during an American International Sculptors Symposium project.
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2004: A bronze plaque of Reed's poem "Going East", installed in the Berkeley Poetry Walk in Berkeley, California, designated a National Poetry Landmark by the Academy of American Poets
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2010–13: A collaborative public art installation work, Moving Richmond, for Richmond, California's BART station, incorporates two Reed poems, written for this project after meetings with Richmond residents, into two mounted iron sculptures by Mildred Howard.
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2011: "beware do not read this poem". Included in stone installation and audio recording by Rochester Poets Walk, Rochester, New York.
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2013: SF JAZZ Center, which opened in January 2013, installs Reed's poem "When I Die I Will Go to Jazz" on the center's North Gate in Linden Alley.
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2017: LIT CITY banner along Washington Street in Buffalo, New York, as part of a celebration of the city's literary history.
Further reading
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Lucas, Julian. "The Yeehaw Papyrus", The New York Review of Books, May 15, 2022.
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Lucas, Julian. "Ishmael Reed Gets The Last Laugh", The New Yorker, online July 18, 2021.
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Gilyard, Keith. "Review of Ishmael Reed's 'Conjugating Hindi'." Tribes Magazine, July 9, 2018.
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Howell, Patrick A. "Ishmael Reed in Interview", Into the Void magazine, April 14, 2018.
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Wang, Liya. Ishmael Reed and Multiculturalism. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2018.
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Zeng, Yanyu. "Interview with Ishmael Reed". Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Hunan Normal University, Volume 1/No.1/December 2017.
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Ludwig, Sami (ed.) American Multiculturalism in Context: Views from at Home and Abroad. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Includes "Jazz Musicians as Pioneer Multi-Culturalists, the Co-Optation of Them, and the Reason Jazz Survives" by Ishmael Reed, pp. 189–199.
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Paladin, Nicola, and Giogio Rimondi (eds). Una bussola per l'infosfera, con Ishmael Reed tra musica e letteratura. Milano: Agenzia X, 2017. Includes Reed's address, "Da Willert Park Courts a Palazzo Leoni Montanari", pp. 27–39.
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Rimondi, Giorgio (ed.). Il grande incantatore per Ishmael Reed. Milan, Italy: Agenzia X, 2016. (Includes essays on Reed's work by Italian scholars and translations of 10 Reed poems.)
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Lin, Yuqing. A Study on Ishmael Reed's Neo-HooDoo Multiculturalism. Beijing: Intellectual Property Publishing House, 2015. 《伊什梅尔•里德的"新伏都"多元文化主义研究》，北京：知识产权出版社，2015.
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Lin, Yuqing. "The Writing Politics of Multicultural Literature--An Interview with Ishmael Reed" New Perspectives on World Literature, 2016(1) 《多元文化主义的写作政治——伊什梅尔·里德访谈录》，《外国文学动态研究》
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Lin, Yuqing. "Fight Media Hegemony with a Trickster's Critique: Ishmael Reed's Faction about O.J. and Media Lynching". The Project on the History of Black Writing, September 10, 2014: [35]
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Wang, Liya. "Postcolonial Narrative Studies", Foreign Literature Study, no. 4, 2014. 《"后殖民叙事学"》，《外国文学》，2014年第4期。
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Ludwig, Sami (ed.). On the Aesthetic Legacy of Ishmael Reed: Contemporary Assessments. Huntington Beach, California: World Parade Books, 2012.
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Wang, Liya. "Irony and Allegory in Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring." Foreign Literature Studies, No. 4. 2010. 论伊什梅尔·里德《春季日语班》中的反讽隐喻， 《外国文学》 2010年第4期。
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Wang, Liya. "History and Allegory in Ishmael Reed's Fiction". Foreign Literature Review, No. 4, 2010. 伊什梅尔·里德的历史叙述及其政治隐喻，外国文学评论，2010年第4期。
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Zeng, Yanyu. "Identity Crisis and the Irony of Political Correctness in Ishmael Reed's Japanese by Spring and Philip Roth's The Human Stain", Contemporary Foreign Literature, No. 2, pp. 79–87, 2012.
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Zeng, Yanyu. "Neo Hoodooism and Historiography in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada", Contemporary Foreign Literature, No. 4, pp. 92–99, 2010.
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Sirmans, Franklin (ed.). NeoHooDoo, Art for a Forgotten Faith. New Haven and London: The Menil Foundation, Inc., distributed by Yale University Press, 2008. (Includes Sirmans' interview with Reed, pp. 74–81.)
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Lin, YuanFu. On Ishmael Reed's Postmodernist Fictional Art of Parody. Xiamen, China: Xiamen University Press, 2008.
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Mvuyekure, Pierre-Damien, with a preface by Jerome Klinkowitz. The "Dark Heathenism" of the American Novelist Ishmael Reed: African Voodoo as American Literary Hoodoo. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd, 2007.
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Ross, Kent Chapin. Towards Postmodern Multiculturalism: A New Trend of African American and Jewish American Literature Viewed Through Ishmael Reed and Philip Roth, Purdue University: Philip Roth Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 70–73.
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Williams, Dana A. (ed.), African American Humor, Irony and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.
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Ebbeson, Jeffrey, Postmodernism and its Others: the fiction of Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker and Don DeLillo. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
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Nishikawa, Kinohi. " Mumbo Jumbo", in Emmanuel S. Nelson (ed.), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. 5 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. pp. 1552–53.
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Reed, Ishmael. "My 1960s" in Rediscovering America, the Making of Multicultural America, 1900–2000, written and edited by Carla Blank. Three Rivers Press, 2003, pp. 259–265.
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Spaulding, A. Timothy. History, the Fantastic, and the Postmodern Slave Narrative. Chapter 1: "The Conflation of Time in Ishmael Reed's Flight To Canada and Octavia Butler's Kindred". Columbia: The Ohio State University Press, 2005, pp. 25–60.
[Spaulding, A. Timothy (2005), "The Conflation of Time in Ishmael Reed's Flight To Canada and Octavia Butler's Kindred", in History, the Fantastic, and the Postmodern Slave Narrative, Columbia: Ohio State University Press, pp. 25–60.]
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Kathryn Hume. American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction Since 1960. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
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Dick, Bruce Allen (ed. with the assistance of Pavel Zemliansky). The Critical Response to Ishmael Reed. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999. (Includes Dick's 1997 telephone interview with Reed, pp. 228–250.)
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McGee, Patrick. Ishmael Reed and the Ends of Race. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
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Ludwig, Sämi, Concrete Language: Intercultural Communication in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, Cross Cultural Communication Vol. 2, 1996; reissued in 2015.
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Dick, Bruce, and Amritjit Singh (eds). Conversations With Ishmael Reed, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
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Joyce, Joyce A. "Falling Through the Minefield of Black Feminist Criticism: Ishmael Reed, A Case in Point", Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism. Chicago: Third World Press, 1994.
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Peter Nazareth. In the Trickster Tradition: The Novels of Andrew Salkey, Francis Ebejer and Ishmael Reed. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, 1994.
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Joe Weixlmann. "African American Deconstruction of the Novel in the Work of Ishmael Reed and Clarence Major": MELUS 17 (Winter 1991): 57–79.
[ (excerpt).]
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Spillers, Hortense J. "Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed" in Deborah E. McDowell and Arnold Rampersad (eds), Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 25–61.
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Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
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Nazareth, Peter. "Heading Them Off at the Pass: The Fiction of Ishmael Reed", The Review of Contemporary Fiction 4, no. 2, 1984.
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O'Brien, John (ed.), The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 4, No. 2, Summer, 1984. "Juan Goytisolo and Ishmael Reed Number". (Includes articles and interviews with Reed by Reginald Martin, Franco La Polla, Jerry H. Bryant, W. C. Bamberger, Joe Weixlmann, Peter Nazareth, James R. Lindroth, Geoffrey Green and Jack Byrne.)
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Fabre, Michel. "Postmodernist Rhetoric in Ishmael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke Down". In Peter Bruck and Wolfgang Karrer (eds), The Afro-American Novel Since 1960, Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner Publishing Co., 1982, pp. 167–88.
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Settle, Elizabeth A., and Thomas A. Settle. Ishmael Reed, a primary and secondary bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982.
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McConnell, Frank. "Da Hoodoo is Put on America", in A. Robert Lee (ed.), Black Fiction, New Studies in the Afro-American Novel Since 1945. NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980.
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Weixlmann, Joe, Robert Fikes, Jr., and Ishmael Reed. "Mapping out the Gumbo Works: An Ishmael Reed Bibliography", Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring 1978), pp. 24–29. .
Notes
External links
