Frost, Elisabeth A. “Ruses of the Lunatic Muse: Har-
ryette Mullen and Lyric Hybridity.” Women’s Stud-
ies 27, no. 5 (September 1998): 466.
Hogue, Cynthia. “An Interview with Harryette Mul-
len.” Postmodern Culture 9, no. 2 (January 1999):
- Sullivan, Meg. “Spotlight: Harryette Mullen, Poet.”
UCLA Today February 2003. Available online.
URL: http://www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/
html_2002_2003/fac0203_mullen.html. Accessed
October 18, 2006.
Gena Elise Chandler
Mumbo Jumbo Ishmael Reed (1972)
Typically considered ISHMAEL REED’s most impor-
tant work, Mumbo Jumbo, his third novel, is an
experimental tour de force, containing equal parts
detective novel, comedy, literary criticism, his-
tory book, and critique of Western monocultural
domination. It examines the suppression and era-
sure of African influences from “official” Ameri-
can culture. Set during the 1920s in New York City
(when the Jazz Age and the HARLEM RENAISSANCE
were thriving), the Jes Grew Carriers (the JGCs),
members of the African diaspora, threaten the cul-
tural domination of the Atonists, the Eurocentric
cultivators of Western civilization, by infecting
them with Jes Grew, an “anti-plague” “character-
ized by ebullience and ecstacy” (6), that enlivens
its host with jazzy rhythms, vibrant colors, jive
talk, crooked lines, and expressive dance. Jes Grew
is seeking its “text,” and the sterile, geometric, up-
tight Atonists wish to intercept it in order to stop
its promulgation.
The Voodoo-practicing “astrodetective” PaPa
LaBas (a variation on Papa Legba, the loa, or spirit,
closest to humankind in the Voodoo tradition)
is the novel’s protagonist. He is searching for the
murderers of Abdul Sufi Hamid, who had the Jes
Grew text (known as “The Book of Thoth”). A trail
of dead bodies and mysterious newspaper head-
lines lead LaBas to Hinckle Von Vampton, who is a
member of the Knights Templar (a group banished
from the Atonist Path). He claims to have the abil-
ity to anthologize “The Book of Thoth,” which has
been separated into 14 sections and sent to JGCs in
Harlem. Once anthologized, he will “be in charge
of the anti-Jes Grew serum” (69) and therefore will
be able to restore the legacy of the Knights.
Now considered a hallmark of postmodern-
ist fiction, Mumbo Jumbo often disrupts the regi-
mented format of the mass-produced novel. The
first chapter appears before the title page, pertinent
illustrations are peppered throughout (including
a handwritten letter written by character Abdul
Sufi Hamid), and features a “Partial Bibliography.”
PaPa LaBas’s theory that this “struggle between se-
cret societies” extends back to the ancient Egyptian
figures Osiris (Jes Grew) and Set (the Atonists) is
meant to be taken with the utmost seriousness by
Reed’s audience.
The novel’s reputation has been continually
strong since it first appeared in 1972. In a Village
Voice review, LORENZO THOMAS writes that Mumbo
Jumbo is about “the crisis of a culture that refuses
to acknowledge itself,” adding that “it goes beyond
assault to re-definition” (38–39). More critically,
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., states in The SIGNIFYING
MONKEY that Mumbo Jumbo “is both a definition
of Afro-American culture and its deflation.... [It
is] rife with hardened convention and presupposi-
tion as is the rest of the Western tradition” (220).
Mumbo Jumbo was nominated for the National
Book Award in 1973. The most ironic acclaim
given to this novel appeared when Harold Bloom
included it in his list of masterpieces of the West-
ern canon in 1994.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fox, Robert Elliot. Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black
Postmodernist Fiction of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka,
Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 1987.
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory
of African-American Literary Criticism. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Ludwig, Sami. Concrete Language: Intercultural
Communication in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The
Woman Warrior and Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo
Jumbo. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1996.
Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black
Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin’s, 1988.Mumbo Jumbo 375