My life in books

Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed

In Mumbo Jumbo, Reed presents a kaleidoscopic vision of race relations between black and white in America, through the device of two competing strands of secret history – one line that runs through Crusaders and Knights Templar and a host of other European secret societies all the way up to the Klu Klux Klan, and another line that represents a vital and life-affirming spirit that moves through African, Caribbean and Black American culture. In Reed’s novel, the two forces collide – not for the first time, and not for the last - in New York where the rise of Harlem culture and jazz music faces off against white control and oppression, set off by the backdrop of political corruption and the American invasion and occupation of Haiti, and threatens to overwhelm staid, white America with the vitality of the roaring Twenties, Ragtime, free thought and speech and even sex among the young and the forward-looking of all ages.

The book is a stylistic experiment, a non-fiction novel as some have called it, a fiction with over a hundred footnotes referencing real people, places, events. It’s most definitely a book that requires thought, careful reading and a fairly broad knowledge of the elements of history, myth and legend, both European and African, that make up the two secret histories, and more than a passing familiarity with US history of the 1920s. As it happens, I know at least a little bit about a fair number of these things, and nonetheless did a fair bit of Googling while I was reading this.

But it was worth it to be sure. It’s a complex, powerful, and most illuminating book.