Show description for Sunday 12/9/2012 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Our guest this afternoon, on the 5 o'clock hour, poet, playwright, essayist, and novelist, Ishmael Reed.
Mr. Reed returns to the program to discuss his most recent book, Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown.
“Wonderful… Bravo!” Robert Wilson, Pulitzer Prize winner for CIVIL warS.
Ishmael Reed goes too far, again!
Just as the fugitive slaves went to Canada and challenged the
prevailing view that slaves were well off under their masters, Ishmael
Reed has gone all the way to Quebec—where this book is published—to
challenge the widespread opinion that racism is no longer a factor in
American life.
In
some ways, says Reed, the United States very much resembles the country
of the 1850s. The representations of blacks in popular culture are
throwbacks to the days of minstrelsy. Politicians are raising
stereotypes about blacks reminiscent of those that the fugitive slaves
found it necessary to combat: that they are lazy and dependent and need
people to manage them.
Ishmael
Reed establishes his diagnosis of a nervous breakdown in three parts.
Part I on a black president of the United States is entitled “Chief
Executive and Chief Exorcist, Too?” Part II on culture and
representations of African Americans in our supposed post-race era,
“Coonery and Buffoonery.” In Part III, “As Relayed by Themselves,”
cultural figures have a chance to tell the story in their own words.
About Going Too Far and Ishmael Reed
“Ishmael
Reed is a buzz-saw. He ambushes arguments from everunpredictable angles
forcing the rest of us, whatever our politics, to acknowledge not just
his passion but the fierceness of his intellect.” Trey Ellis, author of
Platitudes, Home Repairs, and “The New Black Aesthetic.”
“Reed
is a pre-future sage… His fiction, poems, plays, and recordings are a
moral looking glass for envisioning what we might be. His nonfiction,
however, is at once testimony and indictment of what we are.” Jerry
Ward, Professor of English and African American World Studies, Dillard
University, New Orleans.
“Reed
tackles the Tea Party’s shockingly racist antics,
Obama’s accomplishments, feminism’s effect on the black male image, the
Occupy Movement—to varying results. Reed is best when he historicizes,
as in his essay “Ethnic Studies in the Age of the Tea Party,” and when
he draws on the more rational, even-tempered voices of others, as in his
interviews with Terry McMillan and Nuruddin Farah.” Publishers Weekly,November 05, 2012.
Ishmael Reed
“A
courageous American man of letters, one who, if he lived in most places
in the world, would be a martyr by now.”—Hakim Hasan, The San Francisco
Chronicle
“Reed’s
writing is incisive and astute; impassioned and amusing. He fully
researches his topics and makes a decisive stand based on the facts, as
he sees it….”—Gabrielle David, Phati’tude Literary Magazine
“With Ishmael Reed, the most persistent myths and prejudice crumble under powerful unrelenting jabs and razor-sharp insight.”—Le Devoir, Montreal
This afternoon on New Day Jazz, a special broadcast dedicated to the life and music of David S. Ware. As part of our exploration of Mr. Ware's extraordinary music, we will be joined by poet Will Alexander in the 4 o'clock hour, and pianist, composer, Matthew Shipp at 5. 
