Ishmael Scott Reed (born February 22, 1938) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for hissatirical works challenging American political culture.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Perhaps his best-known work isMumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York. Reed's work represents neglected African and African-American perspectives.[9]
Reed was born inChattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved toBuffalo, New York, when he was a child, during theGreat Migration.[10] After attending local schools, Reed attended theUniversity 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 forWorld 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]
In 1962, Reed moved to theLower East Side of New York City, and foundedAdvance, a community newspaper forNewark, New Jersey,[10] as well as co-founding withWalter Bowart theEast Village Other, which became a well-known underground publication.[13] Reed was also a member of theUmbra Writers Workshop (he attended his first Umbra meeting in Spring 1963, with others present includingLorenzo Thomas,Askia Touré, Charles Patterson,David Henderson, Albert Haynes, andCalvin Hernton),[14] some of whose members helped establish theBlack 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 novelFlight 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 asSun Ra,Cecil Taylor, andAlbert 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 includeYardbird Reader (which he edited from 1972 to 1976), and Reed, Cannon and Johnson Communications, an independent publishing house begun withSteve Cannon and Joe Johnson that focused on multicultural literature in the 1970s.[18][19] Reed's current publishing imprint isIshmael 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 theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 35 years, retiring from there in 2005.[17] He serves as a Distinguished Professor atCalifornia College of the Arts.[21]
Reed's archives are held by the Special Collections at theUniversity of Delaware inNewark.[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 byFranklin Sirmans for theMenil Collection inHouston, Texas, where it opened on June 27, 2008,[28] and subsequently traveled toP.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City, and theMiami Art Museum through 2009.[29] Between 2012 and 2016, Reed served as the first SF Jazz Poet Laureate fromSF 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 betweenBonnie and Clyde and Oakland Blues artistL. C. Good Rockin' Robinson, is included inThe Best American Poetry 2019.[31][32]
Reed said in a 2011 interview withParul Sehgal: "My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back toNathaniel 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 theLos Angeles Review of Books, "it is brilliant — the same sort of experimental brilliance observable in the fiction ofThomas Pynchon or the cut-up technique ofWilliam 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]
Reed has been the central participant in the longest ongoing music/poetry collaboration, known as Conjure projects,[38] produced byKip Hanrahan on American Clavé:Conjure I (1984) andConjure II (1988), which were reissued byRounder Records in 1995; andConjure Bad Mouth (2005), whose compositions were developed in live Conjure band performances, from 2003 to 2004, including engagements atParis'sBanlieues Bleues, London'sBarbican Centre, and the Blue Note Café in Tokyo. TheVillage Voice ranked the 2005Conjure 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 withFor All We Know by The Ishmael Reed Quintet.[39] His piano playing was cited byHarper's Bazaar[citation needed] andVogue as he accompanied a 2019 fashion show at theSerpentine Gallery in London, featuring the work of designerGrace 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 theGrande Halle in Paris, theRed Bull Music Academy World Tour premiered three new songs with lyrics by Ishmael Reed, performed byMacy Gray,Tony Allen, members of The Roots, David Murray and his Big Band,Amp Fiddler andFela! singer/dancers.[44] In 2013, David Murray, with vocalists Macy Gray and Gregory Porter, released the CDBe 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 releasedBlues 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]
In 1960, Reed married Priscilla Thompson. Their daughter, Timothy (1960–2021), was born the same year.[49] Timothy dedicated her semi-autobiographical bookShowing Out (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003) to her father. Reed and Thompson divorced in 1970.[22] Since 1970, he has been married to noted author, choreographer, and directorCarla Blank. Their daughter, Tennessee, is also an author.[22] He lives inOakland, California.[50]
The Wild Gardens of the Loup Garou, with poetry by Reed andColleen 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 asTough Love (2004).
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]
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 byRichard 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" inAmerican 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
QUILT #2, A special issue devoted to the stories of students at University of California Berkeley. Ishmael Reed & Al Young, 1981.ISBN9780931676062
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,ISBN978-0393308334
The HarperCollins Literary Mosaic Series, General Editor of four anthologies edited byGerald Vizenor,Shawn Wong, Nicolas Kanellos and Al Young, 1995–96
MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, Viking/Penguin, 1997,ISBN978-0140259124
From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2001, Da Capo Press, 2003,ISBN978-1560254584
Pow Wow: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience, short fiction anthology, edited with Carla Blank, Da Capo Press, 2009,ISBN1568583400
Black Hollywood Unchained, non-fiction anthology, edited and with an Introduction by Reed, Third World Press, October 2015,ISBN978-0883783535
Bigotry on Broadway, co-edited with Carla Blank, with an Introduction by Reed, Baraka Books, September 2021ISBN1771862564
The Plague Edition of Konch Magazine, co-edited with Tennessee Reed, Ishmael Reed Publishing Co., 2024
Be My Monster Love (Motéma, 2013) – "Be My Monster Love" sung byMacy Gray and "Army of the Faithful (Joyful Noise)" and "Hope Is a Thing with Feathers" sung byGregory Porter
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 CDSacred 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).
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 theAcademy of American Poets
2010–13: A collaborative public art installation work,Moving Richmond, forRichmond, California's BART station, incorporates two Reed poems, written for this project after meetings with Richmond residents, into two mounted iron sculptures byMildred Howard.[32][83][84]
2011: "beware do not read this poem". Included in stone installation and audio recording byRochester 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.
^Carla Blank's latest publication isStorming 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 ofRediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900–2000, Three Rivers Press, 2003.
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:[1]
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'sJapanese 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'sJapanese by Spring and Philip Roth'sThe Human Stain",Contemporary Foreign Literature, No. 2, pp. 79–87, 2012.
Zeng, Yanyu. "Neo Hoodooism and Historiography in Ishmael Reed'sFlight 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 byYale 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: TheEdwin 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" inRediscovering 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'sFlight To Canada and Octavia Butler'sKindred". Columbia: TheOhio State University Press, 2005, pp. 25–60.[5]
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'sThe Woman Warrior and Ishmael Reed'sMumbo 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.
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" inDeborah E. McDowell andArnold Rampersad (eds),Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 25–61.
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'sYellow 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.JSTOR3041493.
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You can view a C-SPAN interview, in which Ishmael Reed discusses his life, work and career,right here.
