Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reedis an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, playwright, editor and publisher, who is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth22 February 1938
CityChattanooga, TN
CountryUnited States of America
admitted challenged
I challenged that and said that he hadn't read much. I mean, how can you make that superlative statement? And he admitted he hadn't read much.
education sex civilization
American cultural institutions seem so bent on preserving the values of "Western civilization," the mythical "Whitetown," that welearn about one another's cultures the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.
writing imagination poetry
Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.
sex way culture
We learn about one another's culture the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.
country makeup taste
In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.
kings mean night
What I can't understand why Blacks can't achieve royal status when it comes to forms that they have largely created? I mean there's a White King of Rock n' Roll, there's a White King of Jazz, how come we can never achieve titles of royalty in these fields we are supposed to prevail in? They held a so called Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the other night, where White judges credit people who resemble them with the invention of Rock and Roll. I didn't even see Blacks in the audience.
country weekend thinking
That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive that kind of sentence he did, which was to go to prison on the weekends; I think he lectured there-an outside lecturer.
war democracy tourists
The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.
careers perfect black
A black boxer's career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.
writing thinking long
Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.
writing men fleeting
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.
trying done
I try to do what has never been done before.
jobs hippie california
I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.
writing justice definitions
Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.