Ishmael
Reed
was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1938 and grew up in working class neighbourhoods in Buffalo, New York. He is one of America’s most renowned black writers, the author of more than twenty books which cut across all genres, especially black experimental fiction. In 1970, his anthology 19 Necromancers from Now, brought together many of the black writers who were rarely permitted into the standard collections of Afro-American literature. Reed issued “a metaphysical attack on the imagination and urged the new black writers and critics to flee ‘the cultural slave quarters’ and develop non-Western literary standards.” Two of his books have been nominated for the National Book Awards, and book of poetry, Conjure (1972), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His novels include: The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Reckless Eyeballing(1986), Japanese Spring, and Airing Dirty Laundry (1993). His latest anthology Multi-America: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace was published in 1998. Ishmael Reed lives in Oakland, California.
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