Background
Reed, Ishmael was born on February 22, 1938 in Chattanooga. Son of Bennie S. Reed and Thelma Coleman.
(This collection of Reed's nonfiction from the past 15 yea...)
This collection of Reed's nonfiction from the past 15 years confirms his status as an Establishment agitator and advocate of multiculturalism. Reed takes on the major news networks and NPR and makes clear his views on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and Mike Tyson. Reed was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201624621/?tag=2022091-20
( With offbeat humor and on-target social criticism, Ishm...)
With offbeat humor and on-target social criticism, Ishmael Reed presents in "The Terrible Threes" a vision of America in the not-too-distant future, a portrait of a fairy tale gone awry. Opening on Thanksgiving Day in the late 1990s--three years after the former fashion-model president was laughed out of office for admitting that Saint Nicholas knew more about the workings of the executive branch than he did--the White House is implicated in a plot to rid America of its surplus people and the Third World of its nuclear weapons.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1564782247/?tag=2022091-20
(Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave’s-ey...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684847507/?tag=2022091-20
( "The Terrible Twos" is a wickedly funny, sharp-edged fi...)
"The Terrible Twos" is a wickedly funny, sharp-edged fictional assault on all those sulky, spoiled naysayers needing instant gratification--Americans. Ishmael Reed's sixth novel depicts a zany, bizarre, and all-too believable future where mankind's fate depends upon St. Nicholas and a Risto rasta dwarf named Black Peter, who together wreak mischievous havoc on Wall Street and in the Oval Office. This offbeat, on-target social critique makes marvelous fun of everything that is American, from commercialism to Congress, Santa Claus to religions cults.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1564782263/?tag=2022091-20
(Louisiana Red is more than just Tabasco's chief rival. No...)
Louisiana Red is more than just Tabasco's chief rival. Not only will it burn your tongue, it can kill as well. All over the Americas people do each other in because they are full of Louisiana Red, which causes them to slam the door, fly off at the handle and feel the need to cut comebody. After the murder of a business associate who made an eloquent attempt to put Louisiana Red into its Last Days where it belongs, Papa LaBas, private eye and noonday HooDoo, travels to Berkeley, California, and runs right into Louisiana Red and its physical incarnation, Minnie the Moocher. Will old Louisiana Red, this hot-headed, red-eyed monster which provokes people to harm each other over a hamburger, prevail? Or will Papa LaBas once again break the case wide open by using his customary techniques of taking a long shot, dropping hints, planting leaks and sending out feelers?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q0R2W8/?tag=2022091-20
(When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1564782360/?tag=2022091-20
(Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at t...)
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
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140255850/?tag=2022091-20
(“Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A c...)
“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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1564782387/?tag=2022091-20
(The classic freewheeling look at race relations through t...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684824779/?tag=2022091-20
Reed, Ishmael was born on February 22, 1938 in Chattanooga. Son of Bennie S. Reed and Thelma Coleman.
Co-founder, Yardbird Public Company Inc., Berkeley, 1971;
editorial director, Yardbird Public Company Inc., Berkeley, 1971-1975;
editor, Yardbird Reader, 1972-1976;
co-founder, Reed, Cannon & Johnson Comm. Company, Berkeley, since 1973;
co-founder, Before Columbus Foundation, Berkeley, since 1976;
editor-in-chief, Y'Bird magazine, 1978-1980;
co-founder, Ishmael Reed and Al Young's Quilt, Berkeley, since 1980;
co-editor, Quilt magazine, since 1981. Co-founder East Village Other, 1965, Advance, 1965.
Teacher St. Mark's in the Bowery prose workshop, 1966. Guest lecturer University of California, Berkeley,1968-, U. Washington, 1969-1970, State University of New York, Buffalo, 1975, 79, Yale University, 1979, Dartmouth College, 1980-1981, Sitka Cmty. Association, 1982, U. Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1982, Columbia University, 1983, Harvard University, 1987.
Associate fellow Calhoun College, Yale University, since 1982, Harvard Signet Society, since 1987. Regents lecturer University of California, Santa Barbara, 1988. Member usage panel American Heritage Dictionary.
(When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of...)
(Ishmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off...)
( With offbeat humor and on-target social criticism, Ishm...)
(Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at t...)
(Chappie Puttbutt, a Black professor at the overwhelmingly...)
(Nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book A...)
( "The Terrible Twos" is a wickedly funny, sharp-edged fi...)
(This collection of Reed's nonfiction from the past 15 yea...)
( It's the 1980s and the politics of the New York theater...)
(Essays deal with Black American art, popular heroes, lite...)
(Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave’s-ey...)
(The classic freewheeling look at race relations through t...)
(An anthology of original american writings for the 1970s.)
(Louisiana Red is more than just Tabasco's chief rival. No...)
(Book by Reed, Ishmael)
(Book by Reed, Ishmael)
(1st Dalkey Archive e)
(Fiction.)
(“Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A c...)
Chairman Berkeley Arts Commission, 1980, 81. Board directors chairman Coordinating Council Literature Magazines, 1975-1979, advisory board chairman, 1977-1979. Member Author's Guild American, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Celtic Foundation.
Son of Bennie Stephen (stepfather) and Thelma (Coleman) R. Married Priscilla Rose, 1960 (divorced 1970). Children: Timothy, Brett.
Married Carla Blank; 1 child, Tennessee Maria.