"The most revolutionary black novelist who has appeared in print thus far," wrote Nick Aaron Ford as early as 1971, "is Ishmael Reed ." Nick Aaron Ford, one of the elder statesmen of Afro-American literary criticism, could make this bold judgment of...

Ishmael Reed is one of America's leading proponents of multiculturalism. His commitment to the transformation of America into a truly multicultural society has informed his writing and has also been evident in his energetic activity as editor,...

Ishmael Reed's importance to contemporary literary studies stems in part from his ability to channel his encyclopedic historical, political, and cultural knowledge into syncretic poetry and prose that resonate with the voices of diverse ethnicities,...

Ishmael Reed, regarded as one of the greatest satirists in America since Mark Twain, is also one of the best known multi-faceted writers of the twentieth century; his titles include novelist, poet, publisher, playwright, literary critic, songwriter,...

Ishmael Scott Reed (February 22, 1938) is an American poet, essayist and novelist. Reed is one of the best-known African American writers of his generation, and along with Amiri Baraka is one of the most controversial (and politically left-wing). His...

At his last supper before leaving the East for the West, writer Ishmael Reed was doing his Samurai act at a Japanese restaurant in Cambridge, savaging feminists, '60s liberals-turned-neoconservatives, blacks and whites like so many pieces of sushi. True to the abrasive, satirical,...

Max Roach called Ishmael Reed "the Charlie Parker of American fiction," but Reed likes to think of himself as "the tommy Harns of writing." Hearns is an unorthodox southpaw boxing champion who has taken on all comers and has won six different weight...

In the following essay, Zamir delineates the major thematic concerns and influences behind Reed's seminal poem “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.”

In the following essay, Rushdy explores the role of the Neo-HooDoo slave narrative in Flight to Canada, contending that the novel is Reed's “most considered aesthetic enactment of Neo-HooDoo religious principles and also his most sophisticated representation of the motivation governing his parodic impetus.”

In the following essay, Nazareth provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Reed's fiction, beginning with Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down.