Conjugating Hindi

Ishmael Reed's Conjugating Hindi is a hilarious work of satire clearly modeled on his past novels, particularly Japanese by Spring. A story inspired by Indian-American right-wingers like Dinesh D'Souza and the current political climate under Trump, it involves hysterical xenophobia and racism directed against India and its Diaspora after a politically assertive prime minister, Si, is blamed for a destroyed plane. The self-hating and racist Indian conservative commentator, Shashi, is forced to depend on Peter Bowman, or Boa, during this time until the situation cools down.

Along the way, Ishmael Reed inserts himself into the novel (unafraid to mock himself or the wounds of aging on his body), consistently criticizes gentrification in Oakland and rails against the Far Reich presidency (clearly an allusion to Trump), intersectionality, white feminism, and the racist practices of non-white immigrants who leap to join America's oldest pastime: putting down blacks. Reading this novel as someone who has never visited Oakland, it is apparent how devoted Reed is to the city and preserving its past and unique culture. 

While a thrilling and very concise work of satirical fiction, I was a little disappointed by this recent Red novel. First of all, it reads too much like Ishmael Reed's articles in Counterpunch or his social media accounts. While I usually enjoy those, I was expecting something more subtle instead of many lines that almost read exactly like his nonfiction. Expecting more distance between the author and the work, one nevertheless cannot help but enjoy the way Reed inserts himself into the story as well as a character from Japanese by Spring. 

However, the constant references or parodies of Hamilton and other lines inspired by Reed's earlier essays took away from developing the Si storyline. It never really goes anywhere, despite Si threatening a no fly zone over London and international tensions between the US and India. Moreover, Boa's mother is introduced into the story, but disappears, although I would like to think she may have played a role in the killing of Si. Instead of an off the rails wackiness, we get a wacky narrative featuring Maman Brigitte, racial stereotypes, and a growing awareness on the part of Shashi and Boa to their understandings of India, the US, and solidarity between oppressed peoples.

Of course, Conjugating Hindi is still worth reading. It provides a hilarious satirical perspective on the frightening political climate our of time. Reed's numerous rants, expressed through Boa, deliciously skewer white liberal sensibilities, deconstruct gentrification, critique the out of control costs of living in the Bay Area, and unpack the troubled racial, gender, and cultural dilemmas at play in India, the desi communities of the US and African-Americans. Considering the rise of Trump, resurgent alt-right voices, and the demographic shifts in the US, almost everything in this novel is disturbingly possible and relevant. Plus, it brings a smile to this reader's face to see Reed bring back in a clever yet outrageous manner the neo-Hoodoo/Vodun aesthetic. His illustrations accompanying the novel are also entertaining, provocative, and enhance the trickster aesthetic of the work. 

The Free-Lance Pallbearers

Although far from being my favorite of Ishmael Reed's novels, The Free-Lance Pallbearers packs quite a punch. A satirical work on the US and race relations, it's most similar to The Terrible Twos rather than some of his novels that are closer chronologically to this work, though hoodoo's prominence ties it with Reed's neo-Hoodoo aesthetic of his early novels. Considering its publication in the 1960s, the novel is a play on race and the protagonist, Bukka Doopeyduk, transitions from believing in the despotic dictatorship of HARRY Sam to playing a pivotal role in overthrowing it. While reading this, the novel that came to mind was Harry Sonny Ladoo's Yesterdays, which shares an obsession with excrement as symbolic of the society. Anyway, this is not Reed's funniest piece of satire, but important for understanding his development as a novelist willing to take risks. 

Black Hollywood Unchained

I recently listened to this panel of contributors to Ishmael Reed's collection of essays for Black Hollywood Unchained and found it highly informative as well as humorous. Reed and co-panelists Justin Desmangles, Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor, Halifu Osumare, and Marvin X Jackmon spoke at the San Francisco Public Library about the problematic ways in which African-Americans are depicted in Hollywood films. In addition, Reed and other panelists discuss literature, politics, critiques of The Wire's David Simon, Nollywood, Black Arts Movement, and even Islam in Africa. The discussion is always interesting, despite some of the slight audio problems. In the second part of the talk, Reed articulates exactly why the troubling tendency of sexism or misogyny in the media being blamed on black men is not something we can ignore. For Reed, it was never about denying misogyny exists among black men, but to ask why is it that the media often relies on images of pathologized black men for misogyny when it is widespread among men of various ethnic backgrounds. This ties in with some of his past commentary on the Jim Crow media.

Ishmael Reed Reading from Japanese By Spring

One of my favorite satirists reading from his novel, Japanese By Spring, and answering questions at the Cambridge Public Library. After recently reading George Schuyler, my interest in black satire has been rekindled. I have also blogged about this novel, accessible here. 

Ishmael Reed Times 3

I have been reading and listening to talks given by Ishmael Reed in the last few days. His radio interviews, readings, essays, fiction, and, now, his poetry, are always worthwhile for critical insight on US politics, race, literature, or history. Here are some of my favorite Reed "reads" and things I enjoyed in the last week or so.

1. I just finished Reed's satirical novel, The Terrible Twos. A masterful (and humorous) take on the 1980s, the rise of evangelicals in political power, Christmas, and Saint Nicholas, few aspects of mass consumerism and greed escape unscathed in Reed's book. Although one finds it challenging the first time around to keep track of the numerous characters who populate the book, there are conspiracies, excellent one-liners, and excessive wackiness to keep the reader entertained and laughing. While not as engaging as Mumbo Jumbo in its conspiracies, allusions, or historical references, The Terrible Twos does foresee some of the huge problems of the Reagan era. A friend of mine recently wrote an excellent short story rich in satire and stylistically reminiscent of Reed, so if they are reading this, I hope they keep working on mastering satire.

2. My second favorite Reed find was an engaging 1976 radio interview with Charles Ruas on Flight to Canada. What ensued was a conversation on Flight to Canada, Lincoln, slavery, Haiti, and Reed's interest in Vodun. Reed mentions traveling to Haiti and visiting the lovely Episcopal Cathedral in Port-au-Prince and its exquisite murals in the so-called naive style of Haitian painting. My question: why did Reed shift away from his Vodun interests and symbolism in subsequent fiction? The Hoodoo or neo-Hoodoo aesthetics and influences seem to disappear from Reed's subsequent fiction, but perhaps that's just a sign I need to read his recent novels.

3. The third and most intriguing Reed find was last night, listening to a 2006 reading of his poetry. As someone who usually sticks to novels and short stories, I am unfamiliar with most of Reed's poetry. Clearly, that was a mistake to avoid his poetry because they're actually very informative, entertaining and witty. How could anyone dislike "When I Die I Will Go to Jazz" if you are a jazz fan?

Ishmael Reed's Japanese By Spring

Finally read Reed's Japanese by Spring, a powerful example of satire matched only by Reed's own Reckless Eyeballing. Some of the themes are the same, too, such as a critique of feminism, racism, the media, and a comparison of the experiences of one ethnic minority with that of blacks (Jews and Blacks in Reckless, blacks and Japanese in Japanese By Spring). Indeed, the novel is also a fun read for self-insertion. Reed becomes a character in the novel commenting on the media, stereotypes, university politics, the importance of multiculturalism, and the global world we all live in.

Though the main character, Chappie Puttbutt, plays the role of a black lackey for whatever force will empower him on his self-interested path to tenure and moving to the Oakland Hills, he eventually becomes a 'man' and no longer slavishly serves for white or Japanese masters who take over Jack London College. In many ways the novel is an amusing parody of the 'yellow peril' fears common through Europe after Japan's industrialization and imperialism in Asia in the first half of the 20th century, renewed by Japanese economic power in the 1980s and 1990s. The novel is also quite successful for seamlessly fusing parody, satire, and a political tract in defense of multiculturalism, integration, anti-imperialism, while celebrating Japanese (and Yoruba!) culture, history, and civilization. What dragged the novel down at times was Reed's occasional tendency to veer into rants and present data as if the novel was one of his essays, but that was not common enough to change the format of the work. Indeed, sometimes the moments where one really learns from the book is the more academic and pedantic wandering of Reed's pen, such as moments where we learn that the Japanese wanted peace with the US in 1941, somethign already known to the US government via spying on telegrams between Japan and Soviet Russia, thereby proving that the US never had to use the atomic bomb.

What stuck with me the most was how similar the 'culture wars' and fight to defend affirmative action and multiculturalism was in the 1990s to the present, even in the world where commodification and cooptation of 'diversity' have seemingly won out over the white right's academic backlash. To paraphrase the former white supremacist professor Crabtree on the white academic backlash to multicultural pedagogy, white academics on the right became worse than the rednecks they thought themselves superior to by rejecting others. Folks like literary critic Harold Bloom could learn a lot from Japanese By Spring.

Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada

 

The devil's country home. That's what the South is. It's where the devil goes to rest after he's been about the world wearying the hunted and the haunted. This is the land of the hunted and haunted. This is where he comes. The devil sits on the porch of his plantation; He's dressed up like a gentleman and sitting on a white porch between some white columns.

Flight to Canada is the most difficult Ishmael Reed novel I have read. It's a satire of 19th century America, slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Civil War, and the planter elites of the antebellum South. The novel also pokes fun at the assumptions of many that slaves who escaped the South for the North or Canada suddenly lived in paradise. As Raven Quickskill, the black poet and protagonist of the novel finds out, Canada ain't all it's cracked up to be. He finds racism everywhere, North, South and Canada. Thus, the slave narrative never ends with escaping Southern slavery, but continues in lives of turmoil and struggle against white racism around the 19th century world. Canada is far from a noble, safe haven for black runaways. Now, this novel also shares many similarities to other Reed novels, such as Yellow Back Radio Broke Down in that technology from the 20th century is present in 1860s United States, such as television, film, helicopters, yachts, and other wonders of 20th century technology. So the novel has a lot of anachronisms as well as several literary, historical, and political references pertaining to abolitionism, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate states, Captain Kidd, the usurpation of Native American lands, and William Wells Brown, a famous black abolitionist and writer. So this novel is very dense, and for those unfamiliar with the history and literary allusions, it may be too avant-garde for some.

A large part of the novel is dedicated to satirical looks at Southern planter aristocracy through the white planter, Arthur Swille, and the ineptness and desire to recreate feudal Europe with black slaves/serfs and romanticized gallantries. Reed also pokes fun at Abraham Lincoln and his reasons for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and his own extreme racism towards blacks. Of course Harriet Beecher Stowe and the suffragettes, who were quite racist and exploitative of black slavery, are also attacked. Swille's wife is a lazy, Southern belle suffragette who lives off her husband's slaves. Stowe, who got the idea for Uncle Tom's Cabin from black writer Josiah Henson's autobiography, only wrote the novel to purchase a nice home and silk, refusing to share some of her profits with the blacks who gave her the material necessary for her writings. So once again, whites, even abolitionist alllies, perpetuate racism and the dehumanization of African-Americans. Thus, in many ways this novel is a tribute to those forgotten black voices of abolition such as Josiah Henson and William Wells Brown, who wrote the first novel ever penned by an African-American.

Flight to Canada's portrayal of Native Americans is also worth mentioning. Quaw Quaw, educated at Columbia University paid for by her pirate husband, who killed her father and brother, represents the Native American  whitewashed by Anglo-American values and civilization despite losing her own identity and family as a result. Reed also uses the stereotype of an Uncle Tom for Uncle Robin, who actually takes advantage of his privileged position to gradually poison Arthur Swille and change his will, leaving himself the Swille Castle and plantation after the Civil War. Indeed, as Uncle Robin himself notes near the novel's conclusion, he ultimately wins against Swille without direct confrontation whereas Nat Turner is dead and gone for his valiant effort. So the trickster motif in African-American literature is self-evident in Uncle Robin, who 'toms' for white folks but is the one ultimately playing a trick on them despite appearing servile. 

I suppose the most meaningful messages from Flight to Canada is to not distort American history into portraying whites as saviors of black slaves, to recognize the agency of blacks in dismantling slavery as a social, political and economic system, and that freedom is ultimately a state of mind, not a geographic locale. It's a short novel whose multifaceted allusions sometimes escape me, but a worthwhile read nonetheless. Three stars out of five.

Thoughts on Ishmael Reed's Reckless Eyeballing

"It's these white women who are carrying on the attack against black men today, because they struck a deal with white men who run the country" (26).

I just finished reading Ishmael Reed’s Reckless Eyeballing, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s much easier to read than, say, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, and lacks the Vodoo/hoodoo themes in Reed’s 1970s novels. Reckless Eyeballing is a hilarious satire on the New York theater world, feminism, racism, and the American art scene generally. Personally, I find the most significant theme in the novel to be the connections between feminism and racism, specifically, how white men and women use black feminists’ whose books feature animalistic or sexually depraved black men to reinforce white supremacy and perpetuate racist stereotypes of black men. Black men are not the only ones affected by this process in black feminist literature either. Black women are manipulated, coerced, and pressured into writing black male-hating literature for white distribution of their novels, which severely curtails the options for black women writers if they want to get published or make a living. Moreover, these negative images of black men become internationalized through the white-controlled media, publishing houses, and academic institutions, thereby leading to dehumanization and stereotyping of black males around the world. Thus, black women writers’ freedom to express their ideas through writings is challenged by white feminists and patriarchy, which also oppresses black men, who bear the brunt of seemingly all misogyny, homophobia, and sexism. Reed also highlights the role of other ethnic groups and races in this process, especially Jews, Irish police, Southern whites, Caribbean cultures, and the various literary and intellectual schools of thought (and allusions) within the literary world of New York City during an age of rising political correctness.

Though a noted proponent of multicultural approaches to knowledge and education, Reed’s critique of political correctness, as illustrated in this satiric novel, does prove the limits of political correctness and how it perpetuates white supremacy. First, it lowers artistic quality and standards by curtailing the available writing topics and plot developments in the work of men and women of all races. In this novel, Reed’s fictional examples include the protagonist, Ian Bell, a Caribbean immigrant accused of misogyny by the feminist-led critics o New York for his first play, Suzanna, he has to change his subsequent play, Reckless Eyeballing so many times that the original message of the play is twisted to serve absurd fantasies of white feminists. For example, Ball’s play is about a black man, Ham Hill, killed by a lynch mob for looking at a white woman in the South, hence the eyeballing. Ian’s white feminist producer, who is hell-bent on doing a revisionist play about Eva Braun that portrays her as a victim of male war instead of the Nazi that she was, changes the play so that the lynching becomes justified because the simple act of looking at a woman makes lynching justifiable because eyes can ‘rape’ a woman. Bell succumbs to the pressure of the white feminists and agrees to all of Becky French’s suggestions, making the lynching of a black man perfectly justifiable since ‘eyeballing’ is equivalent to rape, and according to the revisionist delusions of French, all black men lynched in the South deserved it because they really committed the heinous act of rape. Ball, however, agrees to all their changes in order to see his play survive, despite his creativity and ability as a playwright facing severe restrictions from feminists who want all black men to be evil and women to be victims of patriarchy. Of course one must recall Reed’s own battles with feminists in this satire, since he too faced similar attacks and pressure for his satiric novels before Reckless Eyeballing was published in 1986. Since this novel is a satire, the actual power of white and their black feminists pawns is over exaggerated, but he does provide multiple examples of other black male writers in the text whose careers are destroyed for not conceding to white feminist ‘rules’ of literature.

Reed’s aforementioned critique of feminism should not be interpreted as a complete repudiation of feminist literature by any means. He merely points out the contradictions within feminism and the replication of racial hierarchies that hurt black men and women disproportionately. Reed’s text also highlights ethnic tensions within the theater and literary world through Jews, blacks, and White women. For some black writers of the older, modernist school, such as Jake Brashford, Jews controlled the production, direction, and creation of black plays and films, and the problem of creating an independent black aesthetic is due to Jewish control of the media and white and black feminist critics. The Jews, however, as represented by Jim Minsk, are actually supportive of Ian Ball’s original draft of Reckless Eyeballing, which lacked the overly unrealistic and misandry of the final version imposed on Ball by Becky French and became a hit with critics because of its attack on black males. Indeed, Jews are also shown to be targets of white racism as well, with Jim Minsk being brutally murdered in Georgia by a mob of racist whites who had tricked him into coming. The question of anti-Semitism, among both blacks and whites, and how it relates to gender comes to the fore later with the revisionist feminist fantasy play about Eva Braun, in which she becomes a heroine who shoots Hitler and marries a Jewish man. Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic propaganda in cartoons and films often used the same stereotypes of Jews that are associated with black men in the United States, exemplified by the black congressmen in Birth of a Nation who leer at white women. Since both Jews and blacks are depicted as sexually addicted to white women, and suffered similarly because of negative stereotypical myths consequently, Jews and Blacks mutual interests in preserving their leftist opposition to the rise of the neoconservative movement of the 1980s under Reagan. Indeed, Paul Shoboat, a Black critic who meets with Ian, believes blacks should emulate Jews, who are our only protection against the powerful right-wing forces that would have no problem killing blacks and Jews (82). Thus, a Black-Jewish coalition, though obviously very troubled in reality, is essential in countering white supremacy. Anti-semitism, however, appears among white feminists, who claim to be allies of women of color but end up perpetuating white supremacy through anti-black racism and attempts to takeover theater productions and criticism. The notion of Jewish identity, however, serves as an important reminder of the salience of race and ethnicity within and across gender, sexuality, and national lines.

Overall, I would rate this book a 4 out 5 stars. The humor is overwhelming here, a true masterpiece of satire, yet I missed many of the literary and film references because of my ignorance of Euro-American literature and older films. However, the obvious satirized themes are laughably absurd in a good way, meaning that the hyperbole works well here. For example, when explaining Becky French’s hatred for black men, one character attributes it to her bad dating experience with a black man while organizing in the South because he stole her credit cards! The Eva Braun play is also quite hilarious because of how ludicrous the idea of Eva Braun as a passive victim of Nazism and male aggression is so apparent. I also enjoyed the “Flower Phantom,” whose true identity is not revealed until the end but becomes quite obvious midway through the novel. The “Flower Phantom” is a black intellectual who goes around New York City shaving black feminists’ heads who support white feminists denigration of black males, leaving a chrysanthemum with the victim afterward. Shaving their heads is a reference to WWII French Resistance men shaving the heads of women who cooperated with the Nazi occupation, implying black feminists who portray black men solely as ‘beasts’ are cooperating with white supremacy and patriarchy. In addition, Reed’s novel elucidates how the politics of political correctness often affirm white supremacy by automatically negating legitimate criticism of certain groups, and often leads to a shift to the right among leftist groups, like many feminists. As a side note, Reed’s critique of black feminists has led many readers to interpret Tremonisha, the black feminist who does not realize her exploitation by white feminists until the second half of the novel, to be Alice Walker. There is one scene in which both Tremonisha and Ian Ball are at her apartment, and he finds her reading Zora Neale Hurston’s magnum opus, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Walker and many black feminists have revived Hurston as the black feminist writer par excellence, but oversimplify her work and seem to only read the aforementioned novel, missing out completely on her Tell My Horse, a anthropological and religious study of Haiti and Jamaica (vodou). From an interview I read, Reed did not intend for Tremonisha to be seen as Alice Walker, but one of the best things about postmodern literature  is open ended conclusions and participatory interpretations. Anywho, anyone interested in black feminism, black intellectuals and schools of thought, race relations, or New York theater scene should read Reckless Eyeballing. Though quite different from Reed’s illustrious Mumbo Jumbo, I highly recommend it. Some of the black perspectives on Nazism, its debt to American racism, and the Holocaust and Jewish history are quite fascinating as well for those without exposure to 'Afrocentric' history.

Comments on Ishmael Reed's Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

“What does white follks business have to do with me, Showcase said lifting her long black skirts and placing his hand upon her creamy thighs. The white man has the brain of Aristotle, the body of Michelangelo’s David and the shining spirit of the Prime-mover, how would it look for a lowly savage and wretch such as me meddling in his noble affairs?” (109)

Wow...Ishmael Reed’s Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down is something else. It’s harder to read than Mumbo Jumbo, his next novel, and in my opinion, tries too hard to cover everything. It shares certain stylistic and thematic similarities with Mumbo Jumbo, but I find it much more difficult. The writing style is not a strict accordance with the ‘rules’ of grammar and English writing, so many readers may be turned off after a few pages. Regardless of the difficulty in reading the text, it does have many fascinating characteristics and themes: parody of Westerns, repudiation of so-called Western civilization, elements of science fiction, conspiracy theories, and alternate history, and satire. The main protagonist, Loop Garoo Kid, a Voodoo/hoodoo cowboy, a name which refers to the ‘werewolves’ of Haitian mythology who turn into monsters and eat people, has to exact vengeance on Drag Gibson, an evil capitalist who embodies America’s westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, for killing the people in the circus group he traveled across the country with. In the process of doing so, the reader is treated to several historical allusions to famous people of the 19th and 20th century (Thomas Jefferson, Lewish & Clark, Marie Laveau, the Voodoo queen of New Orleans, John Wesley Hardin), and anachronisms everywhere, including Chief Showcase’s helicopter and Drag’s television. Like Mumbo Jumbo, Reed critiques the fictional history of the Old West that omits people of color (Indians, Chinese, African-Americans, Mexicans) who were always part of the West (western United States, not “Western’ civilization) and demonstrates the importance of including non-whites in the greater history of the region besides Lewis and Clark, Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, and romanticized, whitewashed cowboys.

The most prominent ways in which the multicultural origins of the Western US are illustrated in the text are the plethora of non-white characters. Chief Showcase, the only surviving Indian in the town the whites created after defeating his people, is reduced to being a servant for Drag. However, Chief Showcase demonstrates the essential and often advanced contributions of Native Americans to the United States in agriculture, food preparation, and even technology. Moreover, Chief Showcase character serves as a permanent reminder of how White Americans ‘acquired’ the West, through extreme violence, trickery, and exploitation. Drag’s Chinese servants also appear in novel to remind the reader of the numerous Chinese immigrants, forced into exploitative labor relations for wealthy whites, also contributed to the multicultural world of the Old West.

African-Americans, however, are given the most prominent role as non-whites in America’s westward expansion. Loop Garoo Kid, a black hoodoo-practicing cowboy, is an important character for several historical and cultural factors. First, a disproportionate number of cowboys actually were black, unlike the whitewashed, romanticized cowboys omnipresent in American popular culture and consciousness. Loop Garoo’s practice of New Orleans-derived voodoo/hoodoo becomes relevant as an alternative to the capitalist, destructive forces of Drag, the United States, and ‘Western’ civilization. Loop Garoo’s invocation of the loas (deities of vodou) leads to his transformation into a hoodoo trickster character, thereby overturning all of Drag’s economic and political power in Yellow Back Radio. Loop Garoo’s calling of the loas leads to a complete change in the town once his curses destroy Drag’s wealth (cattle, mines). A new world, represented by the white python of Loop Garoo’s that symbolizes Damballah, loa of creation, and destroys Drag’s wealth, shows the importance of establishing a world founded in mutual love and respect for all cultures. Voodoo’s potential to become a universal way of life is rooted in it’s ability to incorporate so many influences, including European and Native American cultures. By encouraging the people to Yellow Back Radio to turn away from the exploitative and destructive forces inherent in capitalism and Christianity, Loop Garoo paves the way for the children of the town to find the Seven Cities of Cibola, an anarchist technological paradise where machines have freed humans from reliance on hierarchical structures. In addition, Loop Garou’s loa, Judas Iscariot, shows fundamental issues in Christianity because Loop Garoo belives Jesus Christ was an arrogant, inferior version of Buddha and other religious leaders, thus Judas Iscariot betrayed a false Messiah. Loop Garoo essentially acts as Judas Iscariot to betray the false Christ of ‘Western’ civilization in the United States.

In addition to demanding an acknowledgement of the multicultural origin and present of the United States, Reed criticizes many of his contemporaries within the Black Arts Movement and American intellectuals in general. Many African-American (and other writers) were caught up in neo-social realist literature, that in the words of Bo Shmo, “All art must be for the end of liberating the masses. A landscape is only good when it shows the oppressor hanging from a tree.” Reed, like Loop, believes “No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons” (36). Reed here is saying that artists should have complete liberty to write or create anything they want, and should not be pigeonholed into only producing literature that focuses on black liberation or any other specific political agenda. Indeed, Reed is countering many long held beliefs about black writers among African-American and white critics and intellectuals, who are limiting the ability of blacks to freely express themselves. One still finds this tendency among literary critics and the media, which usually have a very narrow focus on what constitutes ‘great’ African-American literature or art. In the novel, Reed successfully deconstructs the novel form to show how innovative and free artists should feel to experiment in their work, instead of clinging to social realism. By freeing himself from the confining form of the novel, and expectations of black artists that are never leveled against whites, Reed succeeds in crafting a fascinating treatise on the West  that dismantles myths constructed by white Americans to be ‘real’ history. Indeed, Reed expands the American West to the “Western tradition,” featuring a Pope who acknowledges Christianity and Europe’s debt to Black Egypt, and Africa, for the black St. Augustine and other Church figures, popes, etc. White America’s tendency to fetishize the “West” is also critiques through characters such as Thomas Jefferson for not creating their own independent aesthetics and philosophy.

Overall, I would rate Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down a 3.5 stars out of 5. I unquestionably missed a lot in my reading of the text, due to what I find to be sometimes excessively difficult passages and too many themes tackled simultaneously. As previously stated, the satire of the Western genre serves to illustrate the multicultural origins of the region, along with critiques of American and Western European standards of religion and civilization. Indeed, as Loop Garoo says in his calling to the Gods, “O Black Hawk American Indian houngan of Hoo-Doo please do open up some of these prissy orthodox minds so that they will no longer call Black People’s American experience “corrupt” “perverse” and “decadent.” Please show them that Booker T and the MG’s, Etta James, Johnny Ace and Bojangle tapdancing is just as beautiful as anything that happened anywhere else in the world” (64). His emphasis on hoodoo/vodoo as a potential source for collective human liberation and alternative to the “West” but does not totally reject it is reflected in Loop Garoo Kid’s character, a trickster rooted in black folk tradition that paves the road to liberation by setting up the destruction of Drag’s capitalist, murderous regime of western expansion. Feminists will likely have problems with Mustache Sal, an olive-skinned beauty from the East (eastern US) who marries Drag for his money and has sex with nearly every man. She is likely a critique of feminists from the 1960s and 1970s who challenged the double standard imposed on female sexual activity but worked in favor of patriarchal social relations for their own material benefit. I suppose one would have to read the book for oneself to make your own decision, particularly since the novel is fiction and black and white feminists have made well-publicized attacks on Reed for ‘misogyny.’

Ishmael Reed's The Last Days of Louisiana Red

Every time I hear you say that I get sick. Inaccurate as usual. For you to say that is an insult to the millions of negro men who’ve supported their families, freemen who bought their families freedom, negro men working as parking-lot attendants, busboys, slop emptiers, performing every despicable deed to make ends meet against tremendous odds.”

Ishmael Reed’s The Last Days of Louisiana Red is a fascinating satire on 1960s politics. Reed also revives the hero of Mumbo Jumbo, Papa LaBas, to act as detective in the strange and mysterious circumstances of the Yelling family in Berkeley, California. The short novel is often quite hilarious, with several scathing attacks on the city of Berkeley’s hypocritical liberalism and pretensions of academic merit, which is amusing when one remembers that Ishmael Reed was a lecturer at University of California-Berkeley for several decades. Furthermore, this novel shares many similar themes with Mumbo Jumbo, including conspiracies, elements of detective fiction, race, and Vodou, or specifically, New Orleans Vodou as represented by the historical Marie Laveau and Doctor John Montenet. Thus, real historical figures, obvious parodies of contemporary figures, and postmodern fiction are thrown together in this postmodern metatext. The Last Days of Louisiana Red (a reference to the Louisiana Red hot sauce) is also the first Reed novel with elements of misogyny, sometimes bordering on extreme anti-feminism, since the novel’s antagonist, modeled on Antigone, coincidentally, is portrayed as a man-hating selfish woman. Indeed, some interpret the figurehead feminist leader of the Moochers as Angela Davis.

To Reed, no matter how progressive the intentions of left-wing theory, if it remains naive about its relation to the hegemonic form of reason, it operates as yet another arm of Western domination. This essentially sums up Reed’s critique of black feminists, as represented by Minnie the Moocher, in this novel. An obvious reference to the illustrious jazz song by Cab Calloway in 1931, Minnie Yellings causes the downfall of others despite appearances of innocence. Upon becoming a full-fledged Moocher (The Moochers in the novel are the followers of Louisiana Red, the type of violent, evil Vodou practiced by Marie Laveau, the famous New Orleans “queen” of Vodou in the 19th century), Minnie (and other Moochers) live to take away from others without contributing or sharing anything of their own. Minnie talks about being oppressed by men (both black and white), but Papa LaBas, as the in the aforementioned quotation from the text demonstrates, says that black men have always contributed to their families by doing the most lowly, filthy jobs available to provide for their families since slavery days.

Then things heat up when Minnie mentions black men treating women as sex objects before abandoning them if they get pregnant, which leads to Papa LaBas claiming women’s “cunt power” and nature drives men away, which essentially sounds like misogyny. Indeed, an earlier scene in the novel is a brutal battle and eventually sex scene between Minnie’s brother, Street, and one of her female bodyguards, which does evince signs of sexualized violence. In Reed’s defense, Minnie (and other black feminists) attack on black males does often assume and neglect the suffering and contributions to black women and children men have made for centuries. Nonetheless, to portray black feminists and other left-wing ideologies and organizations of the 1960s as “whiners” who want to take and never contribute is a gross generalization of black feminism. Furthermore, to trace the origin of the Moochers back to a violent, evil type of Vodou practiced by a woman suggests that these leftist groups and ideologies prey violence, mistrust, despair while thriving on laziness, theft, and misplaced blame. Now the reader must know not to take this literally, but there is some legitimacy to Reed’s disillusionment with leftist, black groups in the 1970s. Of course this novel is also a NOVEL, which means it cannot and should not be interpreted literally. 

The ‘gumbo,’ or positive Vodou practiced by Papa LaBas and Ed Yelling and his workers, unlike Louisiana Red, is used for healing. Indeed, using one of Doc John’s formulas, Ed Yelling invented a cure for cancer, and was on the way of devising a permanent cure for heroin addiction, which necessitated his death since the forces of Louisiana Red were cooperating with the Mafia. The power of Vodou for positive, restorative change in the world is Reed’s message for building human solidarity and love, not the hateful, misguided politics that replicates the Western tradition of oppression. Thus, Reed’s novel may use misogynist language and attack 1960s radicalism, but it offers a viable alternative open to everyone given the cultural hybridity of blacks due to the creolization of African slaves and centuries of cultural miscegenation. And like Mumbo Jumbo, vodun as the source for a black aesthetic and philosophy, remains a core theme in Ishmael Reed’s work.

However, I must point out that this novel is not as entertaining as Mumbo Jumbo. Although I loved the constant parodies of liberal hypocrisy and unrealistic perceptions of Berkeley, the characters in this novel were not as interesting or moving. Papa LaBas is the only character I could really connect to and appreciate, mainly due to his character in Mumbo Jumbo. Perhaps several of the characters, intended to be parodies of famous people in the 1960s and 1970s, are spoofs I failed to capture due to my own ignorance. On the other hand, the novel is loaded with popular culture references and historical references I could catch, such as Cab Calloway, Minnie the Moocher, feminism, Louisiana Red Hot sauce, and the stereotypes of lesbians and campus radicals. Furthermore, novel is meta because in its conclusion, it recognizes how it does not have an exciting ending, which reminds one of Mumbo Jumbo as a metatext. 

In summation, The Last Days of Louisiana Red is worth picking up for it’s experimental framework and satiric eye on 1960s, Berkeley, California, and the necessity of choosing a political agenda and ideology based on the lived experiences of the people, by the people, to effect social change. The Moochers, rooted in the violent and destructive Marie Laveau, cannot produce a better society if their entire ideology is based on theft and a lack of will to contribute something besides merely demanding. Reed’s portrayal of feminism, though problematic, also applies because a feminist approach that assumes to equate maleness with evil without understanding greater societal problems cannot revolutionize the mind of men. As previously stated, in order to change the world, one must do it through the masses, according to their own ideology and beliefs, thereby avoiding impositions of doctrines disconnected from the daily lives of the people. Regardless of the attempts by Louisiana Red to eradicate the “Business” (vodou along the lines of Doc John’s medicinal practices), the Business will always survive and adapt because of its roots in compromise between personal desire and collective desire, or the ability to love oneself and others.

Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo: Afrocentricism, Philosophy, and Haiti

Time is a pendulum. Not a river. More akin to what goes around comes around.

Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo is an example of African-American postmodern metafiction. Reed uses multiple methods of expressing language through the written prose which abandons the accepted rules of grammar and English writing in favor of a universal hodgepodge approach of pictures, encyclopedia and dictionary entries, transcripts, multiple changes in narrator, and an author who inserts himself into the text occasionally and interweaves footnoted references and citations into the text. Reed also successfully fuses detective fiction, conspiracy and alternate history theories, and a surprisingly linear narrative that includes an Afrocentric perspective on Western history, philosophy, and race relations within the United States. Historical characters, both fictional and factual (James Weldon Johnson, Abdul Hamid, Warren Harding, Cab Calloway, and many others) are successfully mixed to form a complex narrative that exposes the problems of Western civilization and the origins of White and Black American identities.

I shall give a brief summary of the novel in order for the rest of my analysis to be understandable. Furthermore, this novel may be very difficult to understand for those with little knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance, history, Haitian Vodoun, and Afrocentric theory and epistemology. The novel is essentially about the spread of Black American culture during the Jazz Age (1920s) and the Harlem Renaissance, spreading to the point of becoming a pandemic that revolutionized and defined White American and European identities as well as being a product of the New Negro movement described by Alain Locke and other Harlem Renaissance thinkers. Referred to as “Jes Grew” (a reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a famous novel from 1852 in favor of abolition), Black culture and the Black Aesthetic grows from New Orleans to include nearly all of the Western world with new forms of dance, music (jazz and blues), literature, and painting (Pablo Picasso and many other European artists). Jes Grew, seen as a plague by the Atonists, the secret society of Teutonic Knights, Masons, and Knights Templar (yes, the Knights Templar miraculously survived the purging of the Middle Ages), try to stop its spread to preserve the glory of Western civilization and end the “immorality” encouraged by jazz, African-American dance, and art that begin to influence White youths. The Black Aesthetic and African-derived cultural uniqueness of Black Americans, defined as a counterculture of modernity by Paul Gilroy in his Black Atlantic, challenges Western cultural hegemony whilst simultaneously being a product of it and being appropriated by Western Whites in the United States. Indeed, when Freud and Jung visit America in the early 20^th century, both describe White Americans as “going Black” (209). In order to prevent the Atonists from destroying Jes Grew, Papa LaBas, a Harlem-based houngan (Haitian Vodou priest with a name that is a thinly-veiled reference to the loa Papa Legba, god of communication and intermediary between human world and the gods), his friend Black Herman, a legendary and real-life Black magician who also believes in Vodoun, and other Blacks (fictional and factual) work against the Atonists and their secret society, the Wallflower Order that seeks to co-opt and eventually end Jes Grew. The novel twists and turns at multiple points to reveal the story from the perspective of each party as it progresses, culminating in a final showdown between the forces of Atonism and Papa LaBas who reveals the truth like Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s novels: before a large audience, who listen attentively as the detective lays out the case.

Reed’s experimental novel that explores the falsehoods and problems of the Western tradition is profoundly Afrocentric. Premised on the notion of a common African-derived culture for the African diaspora, Reed uses Papa LaBas’s Vodou, Haiti as a cultural propagator of Jes Grew, Ancient Egyptian religion, mythology and history, Western science, the Crusades, the American occupation of Haiti as an extension of the Atonist war against Jes Grew, and conspiracy theories from an Afrocentist perspective to highlight the importance of African cultures in the formation of Western identity and as a countercultural, independent aesthetic that is always changing. Indeed, as Jes Grew changes over time, some of its past formations become appropriated by whites but still remain integral to the development of later forms of Jes Grew. For example, the popularity of blues and jazz music among White Americans decades after African-Americans moved on to more contemporary music forms is just one example of the process. Likewise, Reed’s novel critiques Carl Van Vechten and other whites who attempted to slum it up and take advantage of the genius and autonomy of the Harlem Renaissance to enrich themselves and co-opt it, as Hinkle Von Vampton is modeled on him. Jes Grew survives these Whites’ attempts to manipulate and destroy it, but is forced to reform itself in response as countercultural in order to continue to create another Black aesthetic and culture based on the life experiences of Black Americans.

Reed also makes some huge assumptions often associated with the Afrocentric schools of thought. For example, some of the theories devised by J.A. Rogers and other Afrocentric historians such as John Henrik Clarke are presented as truths, including Rogers’s theory that President Warren Harding was Black. Moreover, when Papa LaBas traces the history of Jes Grew and the Atonists back to ancient Egyptian religion and history during the novel’s climax, there is an assumption of an Ancient Egyptian origin for the West African-derived faiths of Vodou (Yoruba, Fon, and related peoples of Nigeria and Benin) that connects the African diaspora to Egypt and Nubia in addition to a common racial identity. If Papa LaBas’s history of African-American culture is premised on the notion of a monolithic African culture, which it appears to be, then the novel overlooks the immense cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity of the African continent. In fact, Papa LaBas asserts that the origin of the Haitian loa Erzulie, loa of love and female fertility, can be traced to Isis (161-164). A better approach would be to recognize the archetypal maternal and female love deities that can be found in cultures all over the world. Reed ultimately traces Jes Grew’s origins to the Book of Thoth, which initiated as Thoth’s illustrations of the Black god Osiris’s dances associated with spring, fertility, and life along the Nile. The Book of Thoth is sought by the Atonists to prevent Jes Grew from overthrowing Western civilization, but the book itself is based on Afrocentric assumptions of Osiris traveling around the world from Egypt (including South America and Mesoamerica, thus referring to theories regularly associated with They Came Before Columbus and Black Athena). According to Papa LaBas’s history of the world, the teachings of Osiris were brought to Greece and southern Europe by Dionysus, whose name also refers to the University of Nysa, where Osiris learned his teachings from Black men (168).  These teachings of Osiris also moved south, to Nubia, the Sudan, and ultimately West Africa, where disciples of Osiris congregated at Ife, the Yoruba cultural and religious capital for centuries. This Egypt-centric view of African history, however, is very problematic for ignoring the huge cultural and religious differences between West Africa and the Nile Valley, but does conform to longstanding beliefs in Haiti and Black America about the relationship between the Nile Valley civilizations and the African diaspora. Indeed, 19^th century Haitian and African-American writers such as David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and many others, some influenced by the Masons and French Egyptologists, saw Ancient Egypt as a “Black” African culture that proves the glory and capabilities of the Negro race and part of the African American legacy. Strains of black cultural nationalism have always embraced Egypt, and the fact that some Europeans also recognized this (Count Volney of France, for instance) demonstrate the importance of changing the West’s perception of Africa and the African diaspora as static, uncivilized “tribes” wandering the African jungles. Reed challenges these racist assumptions of the West about African savagery by focusing on the origin of Christianity and the Atonists in Black Egypt, where the Virgin Mary of Christianity was modeled on Isis, which is reflected in the widespread Black Madonnas in Christian Europe. According to Reed, the worship of the Virgin Mary was a compromise between the Atonists and “pagans of southern Europe who still believed in the Osiris and Isis fertility cults (170), which coincidentally, were still practiced in “Nubia” during the early Christian period (the fallacy of the Nubian concept will have to be addressed in a separate paper, dear reader).

The Atonists’ attempts to purge the world of the Egyptian-derived mystery cults of Osiris and Isis obviously do not succeed. In the West, the Atonists use Jesus Christ, a man who was only a lowly bokor (similar to a Haitian houngan but can use magic for evil or good) to distract the masses and convince them to turn away from Osiris and the “pagan” traditions based on worship of the loas (Egyptian deities are so entwined into West African/Haitian religion that they become loas in Egypt, Nubia, and southern Europe). However, the Atonists were only able to do this in Europe because West Africa was outside the influence of the Atonist-controlled Church, and the slave trade only revived the Osiris tradition/Black African origins of Greece into Western consciousness again, manifesting as Jes Grew in the 1890s and 1920s (ragtime and jazz, Harlem Renaissance, etc.). Regardless of the problem of assuming an Egypto-centric Afrocentric foundation of history, as mentioned previously, the importance of identifying Egypt’s common cultural substratum with the Sudan and Ethiopia is essential for challenging the West’s long history of racism and “Othering” of Africa, which uses colonial and slavery-era stereoptyes of the African continent to define the antithesis of European glory, civilization, and triumph.  The fact that the origins of Ancient Egypt lie in the Upper Egyptian Nile Valley and northern Sudan is often overlooked by whites who perceive Afrocentric theories of Black Egypt as attempts at self-therapy for elevating black self-esteem, thereby ignoring how the construction of Western history is an even greater attempt at self-therapy in order to justify European aggression, imperialism, and racism against the majority of the world. Thus, Afrocentrism, though problematized by the Egypto-centrism assumed by Reed’s characters, is required for understanding the West’s contradictory relationship to cultures originating in Black Africa. The Atonist movement, rooted in Set’s jealousy of Osiris and attempt to replace him as the god of Egypt, becomes the West’s raison d’etre: vying to control and eradicate expressions of life and the celebratory nature of Osiris’s teachings, thereby creating the closed-minded perception of sexuality and the human body that became pandemic to the Christian world and opposed to the liberating power of dance, emotion, and the praise of life that define African-derived music and religious expression. Hence Set’s attempt to replace worship of the other loas with Aton, the Sun disc, that destroys life and is the antithetical Osiris (174).

Rooted in his Afrocentric alternate history of the world, the philosophical and theological views favored by Papa LaBas, Black Herman, and the Haitians in the novel pose a challenge to the Western traditions of epistemology and religion. As an ever-changing counterculture of resistance dating back to slavery, Papa LaBas, for instance, rejects the restricting and exclusivity of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which only worship a single God rather than accept the Atonist control of human lives. Western individualism is exposed to be a lie; individualism in the Western context can only be properly expressed under the narrow confines of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which does not allow one to worship as one sees fit and express it in their preferred way (35). This is why Papa LaBas is ridiculed by elitist Blacks and Whites opposed to his Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral store in Harlem where he sells cures and performs “The Work,” the tradition of the loa Osiris and loas of Haiti. Moreover, Papa LaBas rejects Jesus Christ, who cannot be true since according to the Bible and various depictions of him, he never laughs, unlike humans (97). Western religion proclaims Christ as both God and human, a product of Western binary oppositional thought, but fails to see the false assumptions of humanity the Atonists place on Christ in the first place. As Patricia Hill Collins explains, Western rationalism is based on binary oppositional thinking that requires objectification by the subject one endeavors to understand, which inevitably leads to thinking in opposites when the objectified becomes defined solely based on differences. This objectification process requires the creation of an Other to explain differences between Western cultures and the non-West, which is also predicated on the objectification of African and Black American cultures that are defined as inherently oppositional to Western rationalism and science. In addition, Western rationalism as presented by the Atonists overlooks the role of personal, lived experience in verifying claims about the world, which ultimately supports the poststructuralist message of postmodern literature generally. Characters in the novel express similar views, though the belief in the fusion of cultures to form newer manifestations of Jes Grew becomes clear near the novel’s conclusion. Abdul Hamid, a real-life Harlem streetcorner preacher of the 1920s, for example, is a self-taught intellectual because the institutionalization of education only removes rebels, controls intellectuals and tries to limit the New Negro writers of the Harlem Renaissance to copying White styles (37). The very structure of Western education restricts access to true knowledge by perpetuating ignorance and weakening autonomous intellectual and cultural expression, unlike the African-based Jes Grew culture of resistance to the limiting Atonist path. 

Furthermore, an independent Black philosophy cannot merely mimic Western philosophy, meaning Black Marxists and other Blacks aping Western thought ultimately cannot transcend the limiting structures of Western thought (51), which are built on objectification of the world rather than cooperation and wonder at the miracles of life and nature. Matter of fact, Papa LaBas criticizes Freud’s theory of indissoluable bond, or being one with the external world as a whole like Papa LaBas is with nature. Because the Western worldview requires objectification, conquest of the natural world ensues, which leads to technological advancement solely for the sake of growth rather than a focus on developing individual freedom and contentment collectively as one can see in the living Jes Grew tradition of Black Americans. The Westerner’s aggression and obsession with conquest (both natural and human) becomes clearly derivable to the focus on the pursuit of an epistemology that omits lived experience and the full effort to create individual happiness as a prerequisite for societal change rather than “progressing” technologically but retaining the inequalities of previous eras. This is not to suggest that the African-derived worldview and epistemology of Black America is opposed to technology. One of the devotees of Jes Grew, Nathan Brown, pursues a pragmatic approach of taking the best of Jes Grew and the West to improve one’s life, thereby worshipping a Black Christ with all the expressive and personal liberation that comes from individual happiness (116). Abdul Hamid, the Islamic radical, also recognized the need for technology to assuage poverty and uplift the increasingly poor people of Harlem (34). A dual approach to the living tradition of Jes Grew, which provides room for personal expression and comprehension of the external world without conquest and manipulation, must remain an independent movement but not totally reject Western rationalism to avoid declines in living conditions. It’s universality (no one is excluded from individual and creative freedom during religious Vodou experiences or told how to worship) and support for lived experience as essential for building foundations of knowledge is self-evident in Jes Grew’s origins back to Ancient Egyptian Osirian cult, which emphasized the celebration of spring and fertility, or life, as the basis for freedom. However, one cannot assume this means hedonism or devotion to carnal pleasure, as Abdul Hamid states about the Book of Thoth and Jes Grew in general. The purpose of Jes Grew is not mere hedonistic and selfish desire, but to reorient philosophy to focus on humanity rather placing reason on a pedestal when the very processes used in the Western rationalist tradition rely on dehumanizing and destructive relationships between the natural world and human society. Instead of hedonism, Jes Grew should be equated with universal emancipatory humanism with respect for all traditions, religious and secular. The unique experiences of the African diaspora exemplify the possibility of such a pursuit because of the constant battle against dehumanization and the heterogeneous origins of Blacks in various West and Central African ethnic groups and the legacy of syncretism within the diaspora.

 Another important theme in the novel is the image and historical/cultural dynamics of Haiti. After the Wallflower Order’s Holy War on Haiti is exposed, Haiti becomes a worldwide symbol of religious and aesthetic freedom (64). The Atonists caused the American occupation of Haiti to attack the source of Jes Grew, since Haiti is closer to Africa culturally than Black America and responsible for bringing Vodou to New Orleans. Haiti, elevated to international symbol of Jes Grew and freedom of religion and aesthetics, plays a significant role in the novel. Charlemagne Peralte, leader of the cacos resisting the Marine occupiers, is portrayed as a Voodooist betrayed by a mulatto and murdered by a white American dressed as a black Haitian woman after a valiant raid on Port-au-Prince. Haitian characters, such as Benoit Battraville, provide Papa LaBas and Black Herman with the necessary information to find Hinkle Von Vampton and Hubert “Safecracker” Gould and prevent the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights in the Wallflower Order from destroying Jes Grew. Batrraville also acts as a mentor, informing Papa LaBas that African-American expressions of Jes Grew must be internally developed, and that the jazz, blues, and other unique Black American forms of art and music are Jes Grew (198). The history of Haiti as an intermediary between African America and Africa is also self-evident in the immense pride African-Americans take in Haitian religion, culture and history, since Haiti was the first black nation to challenge Western hegemony in the Americas. Haitians identification with Ancient Egypt undoubtedly influenced African-Americans, although the exact origins of Haitian studies of Egypt are unknown. The only thing we do know is that the Masons established lodges in Haiti during the colonial period where some free people of color were also present, and since the Masons traced their ceremonial rights to Ancient Egypt, people of color involved in the organization while still in Haiti saw this as an attempt to appropriate what is rightly the legacy of Black people. Papa LaBas’s very name, a reference to Haitian loa Papa Legba, the most popular and widely revered loa in Haiti, is the god of the crossroads whose permission is sought for any ritual possession or communication with other loas. Papa LaBas acts as an intermediary himself between Blacks and the loas when he performs ritual healings or demands his employees at the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral feed the loas, which is a Haitian custom. Haitian cosmology continues to provide the basis for Papa LaBas’s comprehension of the world, and it is ultimately at the crossroads between Western and African worldviews as well since it also carries some European influences from the creolization procress.

As previously stated, Mumbo Jumbo is a wonderful metafiction and exploration of the inherent problems in the West. Surprisingly, Harold Bloom includes the novel in his list of the 500 greatest books of the Western canon, even though Ishmael Reed is challenging the very notion of Western philosophy and civilization while promulgating an Afrocentric multicultural alternative to the limiting Western cultures. Although his Afrocentric philosophy is based on some poor assumptions of an Egyptian origin for many archetypal aspects in human religion and mythology, it is essential for highlighting the West’s unrecognized debt to Africa. Reed also promotes an alternative worldview that places human life and freedom above a system of gathering and verifying knowledge that divides humankind and objectifies nature, abhors ancient but evolving forms of religious expression, and places African diasporic thought in the center for a new model of understanding the world. Haiti plays a vital role in this by challenging the foundation of Western hegemony: white supremacy, intolerant Christianity, and imposed Western aesthetics.