Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
Trickster Tales
By Darryl Pinckney
The Terrible Twos
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 178 pp., $8.95 (paper)
The Terrible Threes
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 180 pp., $16.95
The Free-Lance Pallbearers: An Irreverent Novel
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 155 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 177 pp., $8.95 (paper)
Mumbo Jumbo
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 223 pp., $9.95 (paper)
The Last Days of Louisiana Red
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 177 pp., $8.95 (paper)
New and Collected Poems
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 231 pp., $22.95
Writin' Is Fightin': Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper
by Ishmael Reed
Atheneum, 226 pp., $18.95
The slave narratives tell of spirits riding people at night, of elixirs dearly bought from conjure men, chicken bones rubbed on those from whom love was wanted, and of dreams taken as omens. Harriet Tubman heeded visions which she described in the wildest poetry. VooDoo, magic, spirit worship as the concealed religious heritage of the black masses, and literacy, control of the word as a powerful talisman, are among the folk sources of what Ishmael Reed calls the 'Neo-HooDoo aesthetic' of his polemical essays, contentious poems, and pugnacious, elliptical fictions.
Review, 5029 words
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