Ishmael Reed Quotes

Quotes about:

• During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.'

  Ishmael Reed

  Men, White Man, Black

  53 Copy quote

• No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Men, News

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down”

  20 Copy quote

• One of the joys of reading is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

  Ishmael Reed

  Book, Reading, Joy

  Ishmael Reed (1988). “Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper”, Scribner

  14 Copy quote

• I consider racism to be a medical problem. Racists need serious medical and psychiatric help, because they are killing themselves and making others suffer along with them.

  Ishmael Reed

  Medical Problems, Racism, Suffering

  9 Copy quote

• Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Imagination, Poetry

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  15 Copy quote

• A black boxer's career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.

  Ishmael Reed

  Careers, Perfect, Black

  Ishmael Reed (1988). “Writin' is fightin': thirty-seven years of boxing on paper”, Scribner

  13 Copy quote

• History is the story of warfare between secret societies.

  Ishmael Reed

  Secret, Warfare, Stories

  5 Copy quote

• American cultural institutions seem so bent on preserving the values of "Western civilization," the mythical "Whitetown," that welearn about one another's cultures the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.

  Ishmael Reed

  Education, Sex, Race

  16 Copy quote

• In Haitian mythology there is the figure Ghede, who in West Africa, is Iku, whose role is to show "each man his devil." He's represented by a figure wearing a top hat and smoking a cigar. That's my gig.

  Ishmael Reed

  Men, Smoking, Devil

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  12 Copy quote

• I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

  Ishmael Reed

  Discipline, Honor, Racist

  Ishmael Reed (1978). “Shrovetide in old New Orleans”, Doubleday Books

  15 Copy quote

• Multicultural is not a description of a category of American writing-it is a definition of all American writing.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Justice, Diversity

  8 Copy quote

• The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

  Ishmael Reed

  Education, Race, African American

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  16 Copy quote

• In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.

  Ishmael Reed

  Country, Makeup, Taste

  12 Copy quote

• What was once dormant is now a Creeping Thing

  Ishmael Reed

  Dormant

  Ishmael Reed (2013). “Mumbo Jumbo: A Novel”, p.6, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Men, Fleeting

  Ishmael Reed (1978). “Shrovetide in old New Orleans”, Doubleday Books

  6 Copy quote

• Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.

  Ishmael Reed

  Native American, Illinois, Land

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• A lot of great art comes from the Afro-American male experience. Black men are geniuses, and many times their desperation, their position as being pariahs, leads them to great originality.

  Ishmael Reed

  Art, Men, Black

  5 Copy quote

• We learn about one another's culture the same way we learn about sex: in the streets.

  Ishmael Reed

  Love, Sex, Culture

  8 Copy quote

• Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out.

  Ishmael Reed

  Stress, Media, Propaganda

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  6 Copy quote

• We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.

  Ishmael Reed

  Music, Eye, Light

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  4 Copy quote

• How does the [New York] Times treat White pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the Philadelphia suburbs. which included emergency admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words: the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic" in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug addict is a housewife or suburban White woman.

  Ishmael Reed

  New York, Epidemics, California

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

• I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don't use words like "amber" or "opaque."

  Ishmael Reed

  Thinking, Style, Amber

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  11 Copy quote

• Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

  Ishmael Reed

  Baseball, Chicago, United States

  26 Copy quote

• I reached the age of 70, because I have cultivated an association of multicultural intellectuals who are informed and alert to whatever "tricknology" that's laid on us by the powers that be. These include White ethnic intellectuals- people who know their roots- as well as Native American, Asian American, Hispanic and Black intellectuals. These are thirty, forty-year associations with some of the best minds around. Minds that are ignored by the media.

  Ishmael Reed

  Native American, Media, Years

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

• Currently, U.S. society has been encouraged by its political and subsidized mass-media intelligentsia to view U.S. life as a continual "morning in America" paradise, where the only social problems occur in the inner cities. Psychologists call this denial.

  Ishmael Reed

  Morning, Views, Media

  Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

  5 Copy quote

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