Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

Mumbo Jumbo is a novel about writing itself ? not only in the figurative sense of the postmodern, elf-reflexive text but also in a literal sense? [It] is both a book about texts and a book of texts, a composite narrative of subtexts, pretexts, posttexts, and narratives within narratives. It is both a definition of afro American culture and its deflation.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Author of The Signifying Monkey

Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed?s third novel and by many critics, it is considered as his best. The novel is about a large set of characters, and in the center there is a neo-hoodoo practicer, Papa LaBas. The book is in fact about the struggle between the Christian Ethics and Afro-American Aesthetics. The book?s story is based on this main idea, and it was presented as the struggle over the ?Jes? Grew? and the characters? pursuit for key book to it: ?The Book of Thoth?. As stated above by Gates, Mumbo Jumbo is a significant piece of art in the postmodern literature. With its style and themes, it carries all the important aspects of a postmodern book. If we are to understand why this book has an important place in the American literature we have to study this novel through these aspects: Its style, and more important, the all familiar themes which are taken up through a new vision successfully by Reed.

The first aspect that makes Mumbo Jumbo a postmodern novel is its style. First of all Mumbo Jumbo is an experimental novel that actually employs more textbook than novelistic conventions. It contains illustrations, footnotes, and a bibliography. In many pages you can find Reed jump from the main story to a radio reporter?s voice and back to the conversation again and places an anagram of the word SATAN in the page:

S A T A N

A D A M A

T A B A T

A M A D A

N A T A S (Reed, 33)

Even a poem is placed among the pages of the novel (Reed, 158-159). No one can say that Mumbo Jumbo carries the characteristics of a conventional novel style.

Another important sign of postmodernism in literature is the abandonment of strict time lines, sometimes called discontinuous time. Often an author will construct a sequence of events that have no time relationships to e...

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...on the less striking:

You have just been hit by Ishmael Reed, one of the most prolific black writers of the latter half of the 20th century. Part cultural detective, part bloodhound, part trickster, the Oakland resident's 30-year career has been a roller coaster ride of both accolades and literary antagonisms.

Bibliography

1. Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo. 1972. New York: Antheneum, 1988

2. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

3. Apte, Mahadev L. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1985.

4. Ludwig, Sami. "Ishmael Reeds Inductive Narratology of Detection." African American Review 32 (1998): 435-44. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_n3_v32/ai_21232164/pg_1

5. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the Racial Self. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.

6. Jessee, Sharon A. ?Laughter and identity in Ishmael Reed's 'Mumbo Jumbo.' - Ethnic Humor? MELUS, Winter, 1996 by

7. Fox, Robert Elliot ?About Ishmael Reed's Life and Work?

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/reed/about.htm