Ishmael Reed

Nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Ishmael Reed now returns with a boisterous and irreverent collection of nonfiction writing. "Always provocative, sometimes infuriating, this collection reminds us that the purpose of art is not to confirm and coddle but to provoke and confront."-- The New York Times Book Review.

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.From the Hardcover edition.

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black junior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt as academic dean, the fun really begins—for Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores.Turning every contemporary political and social movement on its head—from feminism to nationalism to jingoism—this boisterous and irreverent novel manages to be by turns hilarious and totally serious. "One of the funniest satires of university politics I've ever read. Ishmael Reed is funnier than Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal." —Leslie Marmon Silko "Reed is, as always, an American original; a wiseguy whose wisdom is the real thing," —The Boston Sunday Globe

In 1960, Ishmael Reed, then an aspiring young writer, interviewed Malcolm X for a local radio station in Buffalo, New York. The encounter cost Reed his job and changed his life. In Malcolm and Me, Reed, acclaimed author of such classic novels as Mumbo Jumbo and winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, reveals a side of Malcolm X the public has never seen before, while exploring how the civil rights firebrand influenced his own views on working, living, speaking out, and left a mark on generations of artists and activists. Malcolm X was one of the most influential human rights activists in history and his views on race, religion, and fighting back changed America and the world. Reed gives us a clear-eyed view of what the man was really like—beyond the headlines and the myth-making. Malcolm and Me is a personal look at the development of an artist and a testament to how chance encounters we have in our youth can transform who we are and the world we live in.

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.

It’s tough to be a buffoon when the Age of Reason is trying to downsize your job. When the King’s Fool dies unexpectedly, a professional buffoon tries to move up the ranks and grab the top slot. But the politics involved in becoming a court jester are no laughing matter. The rules of becoming the top fool are simple: The winner is the one who performs the most outrageous act. Our buffoon and his fellows struggle for supremacy in a profession that is heading for extinction. Ishmael Reed is a playwright, poet, and author of such groundbreaking novels as Mumbo Jumbo and Reckless Eyeballing as well as the best-selling Audible Original Malcolm and Me. Now the acclaimed writer returns to the form that introduced him to reading when he was a child: fairy tales. ©2020 Ishmael Reed (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.

"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."—NewsweekIshmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off to the crazy, ominous kingdom of HARRY SAM—a miserable and dangerous place ruled for thirty years by Harry Sam, a former used car salesman who wields his power from his bathroom throne. In a land of a thousand contradictions peopled by cops and beatniks, black nationalists and white liberals, the crusading Bukka Doopeyduk leads a rebellion against the corrupt Sam in a wildly uproarious and scathing satire, earning the author the right to be dubbed "the brightest contributor to American satire since Mark Twain" (The Nation).

“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.

When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo) comes to Berkeley, California, to investigate the mysterious death of Ed Yellings, owner of the Solid Gumbo Works, he finds himself fighting the rising tide of violence propagated by Louisiana Red and those militant opportunists, the Moochers. A HooDoo detective story and a comprehensive satire on the explosive politics of the ’60s, The Last Days of Louisiana Red exposes the hypocrisy of contemporary American culture and race politics.

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.