Ishmael Reed Flipping the Script

In his book, Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed puts focus on a different point of view than the common Western view, African Americans. He does this in his book through various ways, including through Jes Grew and his specific examples making fun of the ways Western viewpoints perceive Afro-Americans. Through writing these viewpoints, empathy and a less Western biased history is created that we as readers can see and reflect on in our own world’s history. Mumbo Jumbo also puts into perspective the influence of Haitian culture in New Orleans as the main engineer of what American music has been in the past and what it has come to now. 

As we discussed in class, Mumbo Jumbo flips the narrative of racism in the past and empowers Afro-Americans by creating a joke, doing so by mocking white people in the same way black people have been taunted. On pages 96 and 97, the lampoons carved into ivory and wood depict European colonizers in a meta narrative where the Africans become the colonizers to white people. This depiction of white people, “chalk faced”, “monkey like” (likely referring to their thin lips mentioned on page 79), and "ridiculous", is an act of resistance and justice through these sculptures (Reed 79, 96-97).The term “chalk-face” Reed creates seems like a direct combat against “black-face”, which dehumanizes white people and reduces them only to this exaggerated depiction, in the exact same way black people have experienced. For Africans who have been mocked and been called monkey-like, this reclamation that Reed creates in this book helps create a sort of justice and retribution against white people who created this perspective that for hundreds of years has been the dominant point of view for history. Reed’s assertion for creating this passage is not only to underline the wit Africans have possessed, but to also capture how white Europeans view black people as too unsophisticated and witless to create such a caricature that bashes white people in a cunning way. 

The lampoon carving is not the only way Reed pokes fun at Europeans throughout the book using satire as an act of reclamation and dissent from the European-uplifting narrative. As a Wallflower is often considered someone who stays to the side and does not participate, or feels awkward at an event that involves dancing or music, the Wallflower Order’s name seems to be a direct punch at the fact that white people do not have the rhythm to dance. The names Reed appoints to most of the white characters of Mumbo Jumbo are bizarre, bold, and create even more satire surrounding the roles of white people in the book. Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, Hinkle Von Vampton, and Biff Musclewhite’s names all represent how Reed created a joke out of these white characters who are supposed to have a serious role within the novel. This once again directly mirrors how media in our world in the past has incorporated African Americans into mass media, but still found ways to mock them through microaggressions. I feel as though these names are another one of Reed’s genius ways of turning microaggressions that white people have put out against black people into the opposite, claiming back and producing a message of empowerment that Reed would have wanted to send to Afro-Americans during the time in the 1970s when he published the book. 

Reed empowers Afro-Americans in his novel in other ways than making jokes and microaggressions towards white people by highlighting how Haitian culture in New Orleans became the building blocks of American music during the time period in which he writes about. Voodoo culture is laced throughout Mumbo Jumbo with the rise of Jes Grew in New Orleans and the Loas being some sort of origin for the “disease”. As we talked about in class, New Orleans has a deep rooted history in jazz and dance. New Orleans in Congo Square, where funerals were more of a celebration of a person’s life and spontaneous parades where anyone could join would happen, was the place where what today is known as American music commenced. If Jes Grew can be characterized as “A mighty influence,” “the new thang” a dance, “warring against fat, against sickness… things that all reformers in the world could not do for us”, and spread like an insane outbreak, this is what infected the people of New Orleans in the 1920s (Reed 14, 152, 46). In class discussion we talked about how in America there is a cycle of Jes Grew outbursts from generation to generation, of the older generation finding something the younger generation does as shockingly disturbing, even though they did the exact same thing when they were younger. If this cycle began with the rise of jazz and blues in New Orleans in the 1920s, I believe this indicates how New Orleans and Haitian culture began the rise of dissent from the American norms, creating music that has developed over time to become what it has today. Just as I mentioned, what is perceived as American music over time changes, and is perceived by older generations as eccentric and “too much”, but I think that is often what makes it American, just like how it started in New Orleans as Jes Grew. 

Ishmael Reed wrote this novel, Mumbo Jumbo, to create a non-Eurocentric narrative for people to read and form empathy and understanding to the origin of many parts of culture in our country using irony simultaneously with seriousness that produces an impactful read. Whether using a meta-narrative of colonized white people or names formed through white targeted microaggressions, Reed crushes the biased Western narrative that we as readers often perceive media through. Mumbo Jumbo also highlights 1920s New Orleans being the start of the American music culture cycle for the 100 years to follow.

                                                                                                                            -Ava Roberts

Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo. E-book ed., Scribner, 1996.