Ishmael Reed: The Plays

Ishmael Reed: The Plays

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By Ishmael Reed

ISBN: 9781564785510

Publication Date: 9/2/2009

Ishmael Reed's career as one of our great playwrights has long been eclipsed by his other work. Collected here for the first time, Reed's plays follow the ancient tradition of using the theater as a forum in which the official versions of our history can be critiqued. Dealing with subjects that mainstream theatergoers might find disturbing—homelessness, the arbitrary entrapment of a black politician, the excesses of the radical feminist movement, the use of black conservatives to promote right-wing agendas, the exploitation of blacks and Africans as unsuspecting guinea pigs by the pharmaceutical industry, and the hypocrisy of the Christian church—Reed's plays are a pungent antidote to the watered-down world of contemporary pop-culture, where, Reed argues, minority voices remain as marginalized and stigmatized as they were a hundred years ago.

Praise for the Author

"A modern-day Molière." —Backstage

"Literature is lucky to have Ishmael Reed around, if only for the fun of it." —David Remnick, Washington Post

"A great writer." —James Baldwin

Biographical Information

Ishmael Reed (born 1938) is an acclaimed multifaceted writer whose work often engages with overlooked aspects of the American experience. He has published ten novels, including Flight to Canada and Mumbo Jumbo, as well as plays and collections of essays and poetry. With satire, curiosity, teaching and an increasingly global reach, he has has remade literature across six decades and earned a reputation as the godfather of Black postmodernism. Reed won the Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 87th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.