Matthew Friedman

Matthew Friedman

English 1110.01, MWF 12:40-1:35

Instructor: Cathy Ryan

Assignment: Author Profile

February 20, 2017

When going through the darkly archives one can easily get lost in the sheer volume of work. A bit overwhelming at first to be honest. But, after shifting through all of the authors I have settled on Ishmael Reed. He was born in Chattanooga Tennessee and grew up in Buffalo New York. He attended the Buffalo public school from 1956 through 1959. His latter end of education came at Johnson C. Smith University at Charlotte, North Carolina. Ishmael Reed is a well accomplished writer with over thirty pieces. Winning numerous awards during his lifetime. Some of these include the National Book Award, Barbary Coast Award and MacArthur Genius Grant. The reason I settled on Ishmael was because he had a very interesting background. He had to work for everything that he had and it wasn’t easy for him. Also through this hard work he became a very successful writer.

If I could ask him anything, first off it would be why did he decide to go into writing. Another question would be how did moving to buffalo in the early stages of life affect his writings. And finally was were person specific challenges did he face and how did he overcome them. I would ask these questions because they all relate to what it takes to be an author and that is information that many would like to know but many don’t have the answers to.

 

Website Review

Format: Story in paragraphs

Authors: Anonymous(personal page about him written by others)

Source: http://www.ishmaelreed.org/drupal/node/1

This website is basically just the story of his life. It goes through most everything and touches on most of his work. Very well written and most likely by someone who is close to him. Overall I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The only downside of this writing is that it is very long which can cause some readers to get bored.

 

Website Review

Format: Story in paragraphs

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/ishmael-reed=

Authors: Anonymous(personal page about him written by others)

Source: This website is basically just the story of his life. It goes through most everything and touches on most of his work in poetry . Very well written and most likely by someone who is close to him. Overall I give it a 4 out of 5 stars. The only downside of this writing is that it is very long which can cause some readers to get bored. Also is only really about the poet aspect.

Novels

Poetry, plays, novellas, and collected works

  • catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church, 1969
  • Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon or D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful, 1970
  • Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 1972
  • Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970, 1972
  • Chattanooga: Poems, 1973
  • A Secretary to the Spirits, illustrated by Betye Saar, 1978
  • New and Collected Poetry, 1988
  • Gethsemane Park, libretto; Carman Moore, composer (premiere, Berkeley Black Repertory Theater, 1998)
  • The Reed Reader, 2000
  • New and Collected Poems, 1964–2006, 2006 (hardcover); New and Collected Poems, 1964-2007, 2007 (paperback)
  • Ishmael Reed, THE PLAYS, including Mother Hubbard, Savage Wilds, Hubba City, The Preacher and the Rapper, The C Above C Above High C, and Body Parts, 2009
  • The Final Version, a play, premiered at the Nuyorican Poets Café in December, 2013

Non-fiction

  • Shrovetide in Old New Orleans: Essays, Atheneum, 1978
  • God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays, Garland, 1982
  • Writin’ Is Fightin: Thirty-seven Years of Boxing On Paper’. New York: Atheneum, 1989
  • Airing Dirty Laundry. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1993
  • Oakland Rhapsody, The Secret Soul Of An American Downtown.Introduction and Commentary by Ishmael Reed and photographs by Richard Nagler. North Atlantic Books, 1995
  • Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, Crown Journeys, 2003
  • Another Day at the Front: Dispatches from the Race War, Basic Books, 2003
  • Mixing It Up: Taking on the Media Bullies and Other Reflections, Da Capo Press, 2008
  • Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the “Nigger Breakers”, Baraka Books, 2010
  • Going Too Far: Essays About America’s Nervous Breakdown, Baraka Books, 2012
  • The Complete Muhammad Ali, Baraka Books, July, 2015

Anthologies edited by Reed

  • 19 Necromancers From Now, Doubleday & Co., 1970
  • Calafia: The California Poetry, Yardbird Pub. Co., 1978, ISBN 978-0931676031
  • Yardbird Lives!, co-edited with Al Young, Grove Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0394170411
  • The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology, Selections from the American Book Awards 1980–1990, co-edited with Kathryn Trueblood and Shawn Wong, W. W. Norton, 1991, ISBN 978-0393308334
  • The HarperCollins Literary Mosaic Series, General Editor of four anthologies edited by Gerald Vizenor, Shawn Wong, Nicolas Kanellos and Al Young, 1995–96
  • MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, Viking/Penguin, 1997, ISBN 978-0140259124
  • From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2001, Da Capo Press, 2003, ISBN 978-1560254584
  • Pow Wow: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience, short fiction anthology edited with Carla Blank, Da Capo, 2009, ISBN 1568583400
  • Black Hollywood Unchained, non-fiction anthology edited and with an Introduction by Reed, Third World Press, October 2015, ISBN 978-0883783535