Books by Ishmael Reed

Another Day At The Front

by Ishmael Reed

African Americans have been at war with certain elements of the white population from the very beginning. Being black in this hemisphere is a battle, and each day is one spent at the front. In this new collection of essays, his first since Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), Ishmael Reed explores the many forms that this homefront war has taken. His brilliant social criticism feints deftly among past and present, government and media, personal and political. From the author whose essay style has been compared to the punching power of boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, this book is a series of fast, powerful jabs at America's long tradition of racism."Reed wears the mantle of Baldwin and Ellison like a high-powered Flip Wilson in drag."--Baltimore Sun"Ishmael Reed is a genius."--Terry McMillan"The sweep of his work has both grandeur and genius, and even when you disagree with him, he has you laughing, often at yourself. His always-provocative writing has humanity, humor, power, and vision. A true original."--Jill Nelson

Another Day At The Front: Dispatches From The Race War

by Ishmael Reed

This powerful essay collection from an award-winning author takes a critical look at America’s history of racism and the battles fought through the years by Black Americans.
African Americans have been at war with certain elements of the white population from the very beginning. Being Black in this hemisphere is a battle, and each day is one spent at the front. In this new collection of essays, his first since Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), Ishmael Reed explores the many forms that this homefront war has taken. His brilliant social criticism feints deftly among past and present, government and media, personal and political. From the author whose essay style has been compared to the punching power of boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, this book is a series of fast, powerful jabs at America's long tradition of racism.
"Reed wears the mantle of Baldwin and Ellison like a high-powered Flip Wilson in drag." —Baltimore Sun
"Ishmael Reed is a genius." —Terry McMillan
"The sweep of his work has both grandeur and genius, and even when you disagree with him, he has you laughing, often at yourself. His always-provocative writing has humanity, humor, power, and vision. A true original." —Jill Nelson

Mumbo Jumbo

by Ishmael Reed

Named one of the GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS of the last 100 years by The Atlantic

The 50th anniversary edition of the classic, freewheeling novel by one of the most iconic satirists of our time—now with a new introduction by the author.

“Mumbo Jumbo is a mixtape, a collage, a palimpsest...Even if it didn't have an eerie bearing on our modern politics, it’d be worth reading simply for the pleasure of spending time in Reed’s roving mind.”—The Atlantic

“Part vision, part satire, part farce… A wholly original, unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft.” —The New York Times

It is the 1920s in New York City and an epidemic known as Jes Grew is sweeping the nation—a dancing plague, irresistible, joyful, and undeniably Black. Naturally, the powers-that-be are having none of it. A repressive conspiracy is operating in the shadows, and it is dead set on squelching Jes Grew and its Carriers—Black artists and musicians—by any means necessary.

So begins the classic novel by Ishmael Reed, the iconic satirist whose contributions to American literature have drawn praise from the likes of James Baldwin and Harold Bloom. Mumbo Jumbo is an ingenious deconstruction of Western civilization—a cinematic collage that mixes portraits of historical figures and incidents with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Now with a new introduction by the author, this timeless and crucial work of twentieth-century fiction is ready to be discovered by a new generation of readers.

Flight to Canada

by Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave’s-eye view of the Civil War.

Three slaves infected with Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisfied with leaving slavery halfway, one of the trio has vowed to go the whole distance to Canada; his master, Arthur Swille, determined to recover his property, pursues, hot on Raven Quickskill’s trail.

With myth-bending ingenuity, Reed merges history, fantasy, political reality, and high comedy as he parodies the fugitive slave narrative: the slave-poet Quickskill flees to Canada on a nonstop jumbo jet; Abe Lincoln waltzes through slave quarters to the tune of “Hello Dolly”; the plantation mistress lies in bed watching the Beecher Hour on TV. Flight to Canada’s preposterous episodes leap out from the pages of history to reveal a keen sense of America past and present.

New and Collected Poems, 1964-2006

by Ishmael Reed

One of the founding fathers of multi-cultural studies, award-winning writer Ishmael Reed first came to the attention of the literary world as a poet, and despite success as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and recording artist, has never ceased to be a poet. He delves into spiritual and political waters with his own unexpected and uniquely powerful voice.

New and Collected Poems, 1966-2006 captures four decades of Reed's inimitable verse, a visionary journey from Chattanooga to New York, from Africa to Oakland. In language that is pointed, innovative, and profound, Reed weaves politics and war with Yoruba and Jazz, and takes on American culture, from prejudice to Pepsi to George W. Bush.

In this important and long-awaited volume — the first poetry collection from the MacArthur fellow in nearly twenty years — one of America's most esteemed and intrepid poets, whose “Beware Do Not Read This Poem” has been cited by Gale Research as one of about 20 poems most frequently studied in literature courses, shows why Reed has helped define our cultural forefront from the '60s to today.

Ishmael Reed: The Plays (American Literature)

by Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed's career as one of our great playwrights has long been eclipsed by his other work. Collected here for the first time, Reed's plays follow the ancient tradition of using the theater as a forum in which the official versions of our history can be critiqued. Dealing with subjects that mainstream theatergoers might find disturbing―homelessness, the arbitrary entrapment of a black politician, the excesses of the radical feminist movement, the use of black conservatives to promote right-wing agendas, the exploitation of blacks and Africans as unsuspecting guinea pigs by the pharmaceutical industry, and the hypocrisy of the Christian church―Reed's plays are a pungent antidote to the watered-down world of contemporary pop-culture, where, Reed argues, minority voices remain as marginalized and stigmatized as they were a hundred years ago.

Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (Dalkey Archive Essentials)

by Ishmael Reed

“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.

Conjugating Hindi (American Literature)

by Ishmael Reed

California is still the world's biggest hideout. The only thing more western is the Pacific Ocean, where, if the Big One happens, California might find a home at the bottom.
One of those hiding out is Peter Bowman, a former army brat, and lecturer at Woodrow Wilson Community College, who is being hunted for a quality most men would crave. But for Bowman, nicknamed Boa, it has become burdensome. When an opportunity comes, he has to choose between becoming financially solvent or exposing himself to his pursuers. Along the way, he runs into some memorable characters both in reality and in his dreams, including Ishmael Reed. In Ishmael Reed's Conjugating Hindi, stories, histories and myths of different cultures are mixed and sampled. Modern issues like gentrification addressed. It is the closest that a fiction writer has gotten to the hip-hop form on the page.
Once again, Ishmael Reed has pioneered a new form. If his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, was an early Afro-Futurist novel, Mumbo Jumbo recognized as “a graphic novel before we used the term” (according to Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson), Yellow Back Radio Broke Down Blazing Saddles's “important precursor,” Flight To Canada his "Neo Slave Narrative," a concept that he coined–Conjugating Hindi is his global novel. One that crosses all borders.

White Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric Verses

by Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ishmael Reed, Charles Baudelaire, Lord Byron

SEDUCTIVE, SINISTER, GLAMOROUS, HORRIFIC: this collection brings together the best poems inspired by the undead, from Goethe and Byron to Emily Dickinson and Ishmael Reed

A nest of vampires literal and metaphorical, this poetry collection ranges across centuries and languages to bring readers a bevy of dark delights.

The undead have long provided the perfect vessel for humanity's fears and desires—from spine-tingling chills to sinister sexiness, vampires are the ultimate representation of the most frightening and alluring parts of ourselves. They've inspired poems that tell stories, proffer warnings, and imagine life from inside the eternal night, by authors like J.W. Goethe, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Delmira Agustini, and Ishmael Reed, brought together with many more in this one-of-a-kind collection.

With an introduction by Claire Kohda, author of Woman, Eating.

Contents include:
CHILLING TALES: poems by Gottfried August Burger, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey, Anne Bannerman ("The Dark Ladie"), John Stagg ("The Vampyre"), Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rafael Campo DIRE WARNINGS: poems by Heinrich August Ossenfelder ("The Vampire"), John Keats, Henry Thomas Liddell ("The Vampire Bride"), James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, Madison Julius Cawein, Rudyard Kipling, Conrad Aiken, Edna St Vincent Millay ("The Witch-Wife"), James Weldon Johnson THE VAMPIRE WITHIN: poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Emily Brontë ("Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun"), Emily Dickinson ("A Death blow is a Life blow to Some [816]"), Walter Pater, Delmira Agustini, William Butler Yeats ("Oil and Blood"), Ishmael Reed ("I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"), Dorothy Barresi ("Pocket Vampire"), John Yau

The Complete Muhammad Ali

by Ishmael Reed

Including material and photographs not included in most of the 100 other books about the champion, Ishmael Reed’s The Complete Muhammad Ali is more than just a biography—it is a fascinating portrait of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. An honest, balanced portrayal of Ali, the book includes voices that have been omitted from other books. It charts Ali’s evolution from Black Nationalism to a universalism, but does not discount the Nation of Islam and Black Nationalism’s important influence on his intellectual development. Filipino American author Emil Guillermo speaks about how “The Thrilla’ In Manila” brought the Philippines into the 20th century. Fans of Muhammad Ali, boxing fans, and those interested in modern African American history and the Nation of Islam will be fascinated by this biography by an accomplished American author.

Japanese by Spring

by Ishmael Reed

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior 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 boistrois 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

Mixing It Up: Taking On the Media Bullies and Other Reflections

by Ishmael Reed

A new collection of essays first published in The New York Times and Playboy. Reed tackles subjects including Oakland, eugenics, and domestic violence.

Black Hollywood Unchained

by Ishmael Reed

In Black Hollywood Unchained, Ishmael Reed gathers an impressive group of scholars, critics, intellectuals, and artist to examine and respond to the contemporary portrayals of Blacks in films. Using the 2012 release of the film Django Unchained as the focal point of much of the discussion, these essays and reviews provide a critical perspective on the challenges facing filmmakers and actors when confronted with issues on race and the historical portrayal of African American characters. Reed also addresses the black community's perceptiveness as discerning and responsible consumers of film, theatre, art, and music. Contributors to this collection are: Jill Nelson, Amiri Baraka, Cecil Brown, Halifu Osumare, Houston A. Baker Jr., Tony Medina, Herb Boyd, Jerry W. Ward Jr., Ruth Elizabeth Burks, Art Burton, Justin Desmangles, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor, Jack Foley, Joyce A. Joyce, C. Leigh McInnis, Heather Russell, Hariette Surovell, Kathryn Takara, and Al Young.

Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers

by Ishmael Reed

Angry and hilarious, this collection of satirical essays about Barack Obama confronts the racial tensions that have dogged the president during his campaign and first year in office. Some of the pieces include "Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man," "Crazy Rev. Wright," and "Obama Scolds Black Fathers, Gets Bounce in Polls." Previously unpublished material also addresses the controversies around Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Tiger Woods.

Juice!: A Novel (American Literature)

by Ishmael Reed

A lament for the death of print media, the growth of the corporation, and the process of growing old, Juice! serves as a tragi-comedy chronicling the increased anxieties of "post-race" America.

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 artifact in their "Trial of the Century" exhibit and as 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 the figure 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."

Going Too Far Essays about America's Nervous Breakdown

by Ishmael Reed

Challenging a prevailing attitude, this account disputes the idea that racism is no longer a factor in American life. Based on cultural and literary evidence--including Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn--it argues that, in some ways, the United States very much resembles the country of the 1850s. Not only are the representations of blacks in popular culture throwbacks to the days of minstrelsy, but politicians are also raising stereotypes reminiscent of those which fugitive slaves found it necessary to combat: that African Americans are lazy, dependent, and in need of management. Bold and direct, this book brings an important debate to the surface.

Sam Gilliam

by Ishmael Reed, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Andria Hickey

As featured in The Wall Street Journal's 2024 Holiday Gift Books: Fine Art

The definitive monograph of Sam Gilliam one of the great innovators in post-war American painting

An African American artist in the nation's capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Sam Gilliam blazed a trail with his singular artistic vision. Gilliam emerged from the Washington, DC art scene in the mid 1960s with works that disrupted established artistic norms and styles.

Relentlessly experimental and inspired by the improvisatory ethos of jazz, Gilliam's lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

This book, made in close collaboration with the Sam Gilliam Foundation, is the first to comprehensively survey the breadth of his extraordinary career, and features never-before-seen archival materials an insightful newly commissioned texts that shine light on the artist, his life, and his work, together with examples of Gilliam's work spanning five decades.

The Slave Who Loved Caviar

by Ishmael Reed

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 2021-2022 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.