Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed
Reed in 2019
Born	Ishmael Scott Reed (1938-02-22) February 22, 1938 (age 87) Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation	Poet essayist novelist playwright lyricist
Education	University at Buffalo
Notable works	Full list
Spouse	Priscilla Thompson (m. 1960; divorced) Carla Blank ​ ​ (m. 1970)​
Children	2
Website
ishmaelreed.com

Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]} Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York. Reed's work represents neglected African and African-American perspectives. ^[9]

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. ^[10] 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] 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". ^[11]

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." ^[12]

Career

Bob Callahan, Reed, Carla Blank, Shawn Wong in 1975

In 1962, Reed moved to the Lower East Side of New York City, and founded Advance, a community newspaper for Newark, New Jersey, ^[10] as well as co-founding with Walter Bowart the East Village Other , which became a well-known underground publication. ^[13] Reed was also a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop (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), ^[14] some of whose members helped establish the Black Arts Movement and promoted a Black Aesthetic. ^[15] Although Reed never participated in that movement, he has continued to research the history of black Americans.^{[ citation needed ]} 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. ^[16] 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.^{[ citation needed ]}

Reed has served as editor and publisher of various small presses and journals since the early 1970s. ^[17] These include Yardbird Reader (which he edited from 1972 to 1976), and Reed, Cannon and Johnson Communications, an independent publishing house begun with Steve Cannon and Joe Johnson that focused on multicultural literature in the 1970s. ^{[18] [19]} Reed's current publishing imprint is Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, and his online literary publication, Konch Magazine , features an international mix of poetry, essays and fiction. ^[20] 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. ^[17] He serves as a Distinguished Professor at California College of the Arts. ^[21]

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. ^{[22] [ citation needed ]} Reed was one of the producers of The Domestic Crusaders , a two-act play about Muslim Pakistani Americans written by his former student, Wajahat Ali. ^[23] Its first act was performed at the Kennedy Center's Millennium Hall in Washington, D.C., on November 14, 2010, and remains archived on their website.^{[ citation needed ]} Ishmael Reed is the founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which since 1980 has annually presented the American Book Awards and the Oakland chapter of PEN, ^[24] known as the "blue-collar PEN", which also gives annual awards to writers. ^[25]

Reed's archives are held by the Special Collections at the University of Delaware in Newark. ^[26] Ishmael Reed: An Exhibition, curated by Timothy D. Murray, was shown at the University of Delaware Library from August 16 to December 16, 2007. ^[27] established a three-year collaboration between the non-profit and Oakland-based Second Start Literacy Project in 1998. ^[24] A 1972 manifesto inspired a major visual art exhibit, NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, curated by Franklin Sirmans for the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, where it opened on June 27, 2008, ^[28] and subsequently traveled to P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City, and the Miami Art Museum through 2009. ^[29] Between 2012 and 2016, Reed served as the first SF Jazz Poet Laureate from SF JAZZ, the leading non-profit jazz organization on the West Coast. ^[25] An installation of his poem "When I Die I Will Go to Jazz" appears on the SFJAZZ Center's North Gate in Linden Alley. ^[30] 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. ^{[31] [32]}

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 poets, 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." ^[33] 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. ^[32] 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. ^[34]

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." ^[35] 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." ^[36]

Conjugating Hindi was deeply compelled by Reed's ideas of depicting a unification of multiple cultures. ^[37] In this novel, he explores the congruencies and differences of African-American and South Asian American cultures though political discourse posed by white neo-conservative Americans toward both ethnicities. ^[37] As described in the Los Angeles Review of Books , "it is brilliant — the same sort of experimental brilliance observable in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon or the cut-up technique of William S. Burroughs — and more accessible. ...Conjugating Hindi is a firebrand’s novel, the crackling, overflowing, pugnacious novel of someone who doesn't care about genre boundaries any more than he cares about historical boundaries, but who does care deeply about innovating." ^[37]

Music

Reed has been the central participant in the longest ongoing music/poetry collaboration, known as Conjure projects, ^[38] 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.^{[ citation needed ]}

In 2007, Reed made his debut as a jazz pianist and bandleader with For All We Know by The Ishmael Reed Quintet. ^[39] His piano playing was cited by Harper's Bazaar ^{[ citation needed ]} and Vogue as he accompanied a 2019 fashion show at the Serpentine Gallery in London, featuring the work of designer Grace Wales Bonner. ^{[40] [41]} In 2008, Reed was honored as Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame Awards. ^[17] A David Murray CD released in 2009, The Devil Tried to Kill Me, includes two songs with lyrics by Reed: "Africa", sung by Taj Mahal, and the title song performed by SF-based rapper Sista Kee. ^{[42] [43]} On September 11, 2011, in a Jazz à la Villette concert at the Grande Halle in Paris, the Red Bull Music Academy World Tour premiered three new songs with lyrics by Ishmael Reed, performed by Macy Gray, Tony Allen, members of The Roots, David Murray and his Big Band, Amp Fiddler and Fela! singer/dancers. ^[44] 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". ^[45]

In 2022, Reed released his first album of original compositions, The Hands of Grace. ^{[46] [47]} In 2023, Konch Records released Blues Lyrics by Ishmael Reed, on which Reed reads his poetry with the East Coast Blues Caravan of All Stars featuring Ronnie Stewart, and guest artist David Murray. ^[48]

Personal life

In 1960, Reed married Priscilla Thompson. Their daughter, Timothy (1960–2021), was born the same year. ^[49] Timothy dedicated her semi-autobiographical book Showing Out (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003) to her father. Reed and Thompson divorced in 1970. ^[22] Since 1970, he has been married to writer and teacher Carla Blank. Their daughter, Tennessee, is also an author. ^[22] He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife of more than 50 years, Carla Blank, a noted author, choreographer, and director. ^[50]

Accolades

External videos
You can view a C-SPAN interview, in which Ishmael Reed discusses his life, work and career, right here.

Organizations	Year	Award	Result	Ref.
National Book Awards	1973	Conjure / Mumbo Jumbo	Nominated	[51] [52]
Pulitzer Prize	1973	Conjure	Nominated	[25]
Guggenheim Foundation	1975	Writing Fellowship	Honored	[53]
University at Buffalo	1995	Honorary Doctorate	Honored	[54]
Lila Wallace Association	1997	"Reader's Digest" Award	Honored	[55]
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation	1997	Fellowship award	Honored	[56] [57]
Bay Area Book Reviewers Association	1999	Fred Cody Award	Honored	[58]
Otto René Castillo	2002	Political Theatre Award	Honored	[59]
San Francisco literary festival	2011	Barbary Coast Award	Honored	[60] [61]
Just Buffalo Literary Center	2014	Literary Legacy Award	Honored	[62]
Alberto Dubito International	2016	International prize	Honored	[63]
AUDELCO Awards	2017	Pioneer Award for the Theater	Honored	[64]
The University of California	2020	Distinguished Emeritus Awardee	Honored	[65]
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award	2022	Lifetime Achievement Award	Honored	[66]
Hurston/Wright Foundation	2023	Lifetime Achievement Award	Honored	[67]

Bibliography

Novels and short fiction

• The Freelance Pallbearers, 1967
• Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down , 1969
• Mumbo Jumbo , 1972
• The Last Days of Louisiana Red , 1974
• Flight to Canada , 1976
• The Terrible Twos, 1982
• Reckless Eyeballing, 1986
• The Terrible Threes, 1989
• Japanese by Spring , 1993
• Juice!, 2011
• Conjugating Hindi, 2018
• "The Fool Who Thought Too Much" (short story), 2020
• The Terrible Fours, 2021
• The Man Who Haunted Himself, 2022

Poetry and other collected works

• catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church, 1969
• Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon or D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful, 1970
• Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 1972
• Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970, 1972
• Chattanooga: Poems, 1973
• A Secretary to the Spirits, illustrated by Betye Saar, 1978
• New and Collected Poetry, 1988
• The Reed Reader, 2000
• New and Collected Poems, 1964–2006, 2006 (hardcover); New and Collected Poems, 1964–2007, 2007 (paperback)
• Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, 2020

Plays and librettos

• The Wild Gardens of the Loup Garou, with poetry by Reed and Colleen McElroy and music by Carman Moore (1981, 1989).
• Gethsemane Park, libretto; Carman Moore, composer (premiere, Berkeley Black Repertory Theater, 1998).
• 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).
• The Final Version, premiered at the Nuyorican Poets Café in December 2013.
• Life Among the Aryans, premiered in full production at the Nuyorican Poets Café in June 2018. Archway Editions, 2022.
• The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda , premiered in full production at the Nuyorican Poets Café in May 2019, published by Archway Editions in 2020. ^[68]
• 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.
• 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. ^{[69] [70]}
• The Shine Challenge 2024, premiered as a virtual staged reading sponsored by the Nuyorican Poets Cafe through April 15, 2024. ^[71]
• The Shine Challenge 2025 premiered in a full production sponsored by Theater for the New City, January 30, 2025 ^[72]

Non-fiction

• Shrovetide in Old New Orleans: Essays, Atheneum, 1978
• God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays, Garland, 1982
• Writin' Is Fightin': Thirty-seven Years of Boxing On Paper. New York: Atheneum, 1989
• Airing Dirty Laundry. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1993
• Oakland Rhapsody, The Secret Soul Of An American Downtown. Introduction and Commentary by Ishmael Reed and photographs by Richard Nagler. North Atlantic Books, 1995
• Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, Crown Journeys, 2003
• Another Day at the Front: Dispatches from the Race War, Basic Books, 2003
• Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections, Da Capo Press, 2008
• Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the "Nigger Breakers", Baraka Books, 2010
• Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown, Baraka Books, 2012
• The Complete Muhammad Ali, Baraka Books, July 2015
• "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
• Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, a collection of new and collected essays, Baraka Books, 2019
• Malcolm and Me, written and narrated by Reed, Audible, 2020

Anthologies edited by Reed

• 19 Necromancers From Now, Doubleday & Co., 1970
• Calafia: The California Poetry, Yardbird Pub. Co., 1978, ISBN   978-0931676031
• Yardbird Lives!, co-edited with Al Young, Grove Press, 1978, ISBN   978-0394170411
• QUILT #1, Ishmael Reed & Al Young, 1981. ISBN   0931676053
• QUILT #2, A special issue devoted to the stories of students at University of California Berkeley. Ishmael Reed & Al Young, 1981. ISBN   9780931676062
• 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, ISBN   978-0393308334
• The HarperCollins Literary Mosaic Series, General Editor of four anthologies edited by Gerald Vizenor, Shawn Wong, Nicolas Kanellos and Al Young, 1995–96
• MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, Viking/Penguin, 1997, ISBN   978-0140259124
• From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2001, Da Capo Press, 2003, ISBN   978-1560254584
• Pow Wow: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience, short fiction anthology, edited with Carla Blank, Da Capo Press, 2009, ISBN   1568583400
• Black Hollywood Unchained, non-fiction anthology, edited and with an Introduction by Reed, Third World Press, October 2015, ISBN   978-0883783535
• Bigotry on Broadway, co-edited with Carla Blank, with an Introduction by Reed, Baraka Books, September 2021 ISBN   1771862564
• The Plague Edition of Konch Magazine, co-edited with Tennessee Reed, Ishmael Reed Publishing Co., 2024

Forewords

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Signet Classic Edition, 2013)
• The Collected Novels of Charles Wright (Harper Perennial, 2019)
• Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade (Thames & Hudson, 2019)
• Surviving Financially in a Rigged System (Third World Press Foundation, 2019)
• John Oliver Killens's The Minister Primarily (Amistad, 2021)
• Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (2023) ^[73]
• John A. Williams' novel, The Man Who Cried I Am (Library of America, 2023) ^[74]
• Awol Erizku's Mystic Parallax (Aperture, 2023). ^[75]

Filmography

Year	Title	Director	Role	Notes	Ref.
1980	Personal Problems	Bill Gunn	Producer	Experimental soap opera	[76]
1990	James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket	Karen Thorsen	Himself	Documentary; Archival footage	[77]
2008	Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story	Stefan Forbes	Himself	Documentary; Interview clips	[78]
2012	United States of HooDoo	Oliver Hardt and Darius James	Himself	Documentary; Interview clips	[79]
2013	Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic	Marina Zenovich	Himself	Documentary	[80]
2018	I Am Richard Pryor	Jesse James Miller	Himself	Documentary	[81]
2021	Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez	Susan Stern	Himself	Documentary	[82]

Discography

Kip Hanrahan has released three albums featuring lyrics by Reed:

• Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed (American Clave, 1985)
• Conjure: Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon (American Clave, 1985)
• Conjure: Bad Mouth (American Clave, 2005)

David Murray has released several albums featuring lyrics by Reed:^{[ citation needed ]}

• Sacred Ground (Justin Time, 2007) – "Sacred Ground" and "The Prophet of Doom" sung by Cassandra Wilson
• 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
• 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
• blues for memo (Doublemoon Records, 2016) - "Red Summer" sung by Pervis Evans

Yosvany Terry has released one album including lyrics by Reed:^{[ citation needed ]}

• New Throned Kings (SPassion 2014), CD nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award,^{[ citation needed ]} with Ishmael Reed's lyrics on "Mase Nadodo".

Releases produced by Ishmael Reed^{[ citation needed ]}

• His Bassist (Konch Records, Ishmael Reed, producer), featuring Ortiz Walton and including collaborations based on Reed's poetry, 2014
• 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)^{[ citation needed ]}

• 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.
• 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

• 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.
• 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
• 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. ^{[32] [83] [84]}
• 2011: "beware do not read this poem". Included in stone installation and audio recording by Rochester Poets Walk, Rochester, New York.
• 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.
• 2017: LIT CITY banner along Washington Street in Buffalo, New York, as part of a celebration of the city's literary history.

References

1. "Ishmael Reed Biography". Math.buffalo.edu. Retrieved September 20, 2011.
2. Reed, Ishmael (November 9, 2011). "Trouble Beside the Bay". The New York Times .
3. Reed, Ishmael (December 11, 2010). "What Progressives Don't Understand About Obama". The New York Times.
4. Reed, Ishmael (February 4, 2010). "Fade to White". The New York Times.
5. Reed, Ishmael (January 28, 2012). "Ishmael Reed on the Miltonian Origin of The Other". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 9, 2012. Retrieved April 29, 2012.
6. Ludwig, Samuel (December 18, 2002). "Ishmael Reed". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 6, 2010.
7. Juan-Navarro, Santiago (2010). "Self-Reflexivity and Historical Revisionism in Ishmael Reed's Neo-Hoodoo Aesthetics" (PDF). The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, 17. pp. 77–100. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2011.
8. Mitchell, J. D. (September 13, 2011). "At Work: Ishmael Reed on 'Juice!'". The Paris Review.
9. Elliot Fox, Robert (September 20, 2011). "About Ishmael Reed's Life and Work". Modern American Poetry website. Archived from the original on October 17, 2018. Retrieved February 6, 2010.
10. Blank, Carla (October 21, 2017). "Ishmael Reed (1938- )". blackpast.org . Retrieved July 10, 2025.
11. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis (2014). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (3rd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc. pp. 798–801.
12. "Writing Without Permission: A Conversation with Ishmael Reed". World Literature Today. Interviewed by Emily Doyle. June 8, 2022. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
13. Reed, Ishmael (2012). "Ishmael Reed on the Miltonian Origin of The Other". nyujournalismprojects.org. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
14. Reed, Ishmael (January 14, 2023). "A New Flame for Black Fire". The New York Review . Retrieved January 16, 2024.
15. Miller, D. Scot (June 23, 2017). "The Black Aesthetic (Anchor Books, 1972)". Open Space. SFMOMA | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
16. "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.
17. "Ishmael Reed". poets.org . Retrieved July 9, 2025.
18. Miller, M. H. (February 9, 2018). "A Blind Publisher, Poet — and Link to the Lower East Side's Cultural History". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331.
19. "Joe Johnson". The Center for the Humanities. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
20. Konch Magazine. An Ishmael Reed and Tennessee Reed Publication.
21. "Ishmael Reed Wins Anisfield-Wolf Book Lifetime Achievement Award". dalkeyarchive.com. April 5, 2022. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
22. Lucas, Julian (July 19, 2021). "Ishmael Reed Gets the Last Laugh". The New Yorker .
23. Goodstein, Laurie (September 8, 2009). "A Pakistani-American Family Is Caught in Some Cultural Cross-Fire". The New York Times.
24. Conley, Eileen. "Ishmael Reed – The Oakland Artists Project" . Retrieved January 16, 2024.
25. "Ishmael Reed". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
26. "Finding Aids for Archival Collections – Ishmael Reed papers". University of Delaware Library Special Collections. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
27. Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.
28. Lark, Laura (July 18, 2008). "'NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith' at the Menil Collection". glasstire.com. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
29. Suarez De Jesus, Carlos (March 19, 2009). "NeoHooDoo at Miami Art Museum". Miami New Times. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
30. "SFJAZZ Laureates - Jim Goldberg & Ishmael Reed" Archived June 25, 2014, at the Wayback Machine , SF Jazz.
31. "The Best American Poetry 2019" at Simon & Schuster.
32. Blain, Keisha N. (October 7, 2019). "Writing for a Global Audience: An Interview with Poet Ishmael Reed". The North Star. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
33. Steiner, Andy (October 25, 2007). "Media Diet: Ishmael Reed". Utne Reader. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
34. Jackson, Chris (Fall 2016), "Ishmael Reed, The Art of Poetry No. 100", The Paris Review, No. 218.
35. Sehgal, Parul (March 14, 2011), "Native Son: A Profile of Ishmael Reed", Publishers Weekly .
36. Busby, Margaret (October 21, 2000), "Do the Harlem shuffle", The Guardian .
37. Felicelli, Anita (September 8, 2018). "Satire and Subversion in Ishmael Reed's 'Conjugating Hindi'". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
38. Pareles, Jon (September 21, 1983), "JAZZ: Ishmael Reed Songs", The New York Times.
39. Scott, Ronald E. (December 8, 2022). "REVIEWS: Ishmael Reed, Matthew Shipp". New York Amsterdam News. Retrieved July 9, 2025.
40. Reed, Ishmael (January 18, 2019). "Grace Wales Bonner tells Ishmael Reed about the 'rhythmicality' of her fashion". Interview . Retrieved July 12, 2025.
41. Singer, Olivia (February 17, 2019), "Wales Bonner", Vogue.
42. Fusilli, Jim (November 14, 2009). "Fusion, David Murray Style". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved July 19, 2025.
43. Turner, Mark F. (November 20, 2009). "David Murray and the Gwo ka Masters: The Devil Tried To Kill Me". All About Jazz . Retrieved July 19, 2025.
44. "Paris: Questlove’s Afro-Picks", Red Bull Music Academy World Tour 2012, September 11, 2011.
45. Sachs, Lloyd (July 17, 2024). "David Murray Infinity Quartet: Be My Monster Love". JazzTimes . Retrieved July 9, 2025.
46. Scott, Ron (December 8, 2022). "REVIEWS: Ishmael Reed, Matthew Shipp". New York Amsterdam News .
47. "Tone Glow 102: Ishmael Reed". toneglow.substack.com. September 19, 2023. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
48. Green, Bernice Elizabeth (March 23, 2023). "Playwright Ishmael Reed's inspired play, 'The Conductor,' delivers timely messages". Our Time Press. Retrieved September 21, 2023.
49. Whiting, Sam (February 14, 2021). "Timothy Reed, author and daughter of poet Ishmael Reed, dies at 60". SF Chronicle Datebook. Archived from the original on February 18, 2021.
50. 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.
51. "Conjure | Finalist, National Book Awards 1973 for Poetry". nationalbook.org/. National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
52. "Mumbo Jumbo | Finalist, National Book Awards 1973 for Fiction". nationalbook.org/. National Book Foundation. Retrieved February 14, 2023.
53. "Ishmael Reed, 1975 - US & Canada Competition, Creative Arts - Fiction" Archived July 14, 2014, at the Wayback Machine , John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
54. Spina, Mary Beth (April 27, 1995), "UB to Hold Commencement Ceremonies May 12-14", News Center, University at Buffalo.
55. "Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Awards" (PDF). Wallace Foundation. p. 21. Retrieved July 10, 2025.
56. "Two Blacks Named MacArthur Foundation Fellows", Jet , June 22, 1998, p. 8.
57. "Writer Ishmael Reed, lecturer in UC Berkeley's English Department, wins MacArthur 'genius' fellowship", News Release, Public Affairs. University of California, Berkeley, June 1, 1998.
58. Kipen, David (March 29, 1999). "Hochschild, Chang Win Local Awards". sfchronicle.com. Retrieved July 10, 2025.
59. "Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theatre", TheaterMania.
60. "Barbary Coast Award Honors Ishmael Reed" Archived November 17, 2015, at the Wayback Machine , Litquake, October 2011. Archived 2014.
61. "Barbary Coast Award Recipients", Litquake.
62. Simon, Jeff (February 20, 2014), "In Tribute to Ishmael Reed", The Gusto Blog, Buffalonews.com. Archived February 25, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
63. "Ishmael Reed: Premio alla carriera Alberto Dubito International". Premio Alberto Dubito di Poesia con Musica. March 12, 2016. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
64. AUDELCO Awards, November 2017.
65. "Awards for Berkeley Emeriti", UC Berkeley Retirement Center.
66. "Ishmael Reed among winners of Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards". ABC News. Associated Press. April 5, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
67. "Hurston/Wright Foundation Announces 2023 Legacy Award Nominees and Merit Awardees", Hurston/Wright Foundation, June 28, 2023.
68. Reed, Ishmael (October 2020). "Not Throwing Away My Yacht". harpers.org. Retrieved July 12, 2025.
69. "New Play: THE CONDUCTOR", Ishmael Reed website.
70. "The Conductor by Ishmael Reed" at Theater for the New City.
71. "THE SHINE CHALLENGE, 2024 at Nuyorican Poets Cafe | Dates: (2/23/2024 - 4/15/2024)". Broadway World, Off-Off-Broadway.
72. "THE SHINE CHALLENGE 2025 at Theater for the New City", Broadway World, 2025.
73. "Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton", Wesleyan University Press, 2023.
74. "John A. Williams: The Man Who Cried I Am", Library of America.
75. "Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax", Aperture.
76. "BAMcinématek presents The Groundbreaking Bill Gunn, a tribute to the film work of the African American screenwriter and director, April 1-4", News Release, Brooklyn Academy of Music, March 15, 2010.
77. "JAMES BALDWIN: THE PRICE OF THE TICKET". James Baldwin Project. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
78. "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story". Frontline. PBS. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
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82. Risker, Paul (February 17, 2021). "Rediscovering Spain". Eye For Film. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
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Further reading

• Literature portal

• Lucas, Julian. "The Yeehaw Papyrus", The New York Review of Books , May 15, 2022. ^[1]
• Lucas, Julian. "Ishmael Reed Gets The Last Laugh", The New Yorker, online July 18, 2021. ^[2]
• Gilyard, Keith. "Review of Ishmael Reed's 'Conjugating Hindi'." Tribes Magazine, July 9, 2018. ^[3]
• Howell, Patrick A. "Ishmael Reed in Interview", Into the Void magazine, April 14, 2018.
• Wang, Liya. Ishmael Reed and Multiculturalism. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2018.
• Zeng, Yanyu. "Interview with Ishmael Reed". Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Hunan Normal University, Volume 1/No.1/December 2017.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.)
• 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.
• 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》
• 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:
• 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。
• Ludwig, Sami (ed.). On the Aesthetic Legacy of Ishmael Reed: Contemporary Assessments. Huntington Beach, California: World Parade Books, 2012.
• 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。
• 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。
• 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.
• Zeng, Yanyu. "Neo Hoodooism and Historiography in Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada", Contemporary Foreign Literature, No. 4, pp. 92–99, 2010.
• 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.)
• Lin, YuanFu. On Ishmael Reed's Postmodernist Fictional Art of Parody. Xiamen, China: Xiamen University Press, 2008.
• 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.
• 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. ^[4]
• Williams, Dana A. (ed.), African American Humor, Irony and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007.
• Ebbeson, Jeffrey, Postmodernism and its Others: the fiction of Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker and Don DeLillo. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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. ^[5]
• Hume, Kathryn. American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction Since 1960. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
• 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.)
• McGee, Patrick. Ishmael Reed and the Ends of Race. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
• 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.
• Dick, Bruce, and Amritjit Singh (eds). Conversations With Ishmael Reed, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.
• 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.
• Nazareth, Peter. In the Trickster Tradition: The Novels of Andrew Salkey, Francis Ebejer and Ishmael Reed. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Press, 1994.
• Weixlmann, Joe. "African American Deconstruction of the Novel in the Work of Ishmael Reed and Clarence Major": MELUS 17 (Winter 1991): 57–79. ^[6]
• 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.
• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.
• Nazareth, Peter. "Heading Them Off at the Pass: The Fiction of Ishmael Reed", The Review of Contemporary Fiction 4, no. 2, 1984.
• 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.)
• 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.
• Settle, Elizabeth A., and Thomas A. Settle. Ishmael Reed, a primary and secondary bibliography. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982.
• 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.
• 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. JSTOR   3041493.

Notes

1. Lucas, Julian (May 15, 2022). "The Yeehaw Papyrus". The New York Review of Books.
2. Lucas, Julian (July 26, 2021). "Ishmael Reed Gets The Last Laugh". The New Yorker.
3. Gilyard, Keith (July 9, 2018). "Review of Ishmael Reed's 'Conjugating Hindi'". Tribes.
4. Ross, Kent Chapin (Spring 2007). "Towards Postmodern Multiculturalism: A New Trend of African American and Jewish American Literature Viewed Through Ishmael Reed and Philip Roth". Philip Roth Studies. 3 (1). Purdue University Press: 70–73.
5. 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.
6. Weixlmann, Joe (Winter 1991). "African American Deconstruction of the Novel in the Work of Ishmael Reed and Clarence Major". MELUS. 17 (4): 57–79. doi:10.2307/467268. JSTOR   467268. Archived from the original on October 13, 2015. Retrieved May 11, 2022. (excerpt).

External links

• Official website
• Ishmael Reed at IMDb
• Ishmael Reed Publications
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with Reed, April 3, 2011
• Jonathan McAloon, "Mumbo Jumbo: a dazzling classic finally gets the recognition it deserves", The Guardian (London), August 1, 2017.
• "Ishmael Reed" at African American Literature Book Club (AALBC).