Ishmael Reed

The Plays (American Literature Series)

By Reed, Ishmael

Publishers Summary:
The award-winning plays of one of the most celebrated and innovative American writers of our time. Ishmael Reed’s career as one of our great playwrights has long been eclipsed by his other work. Here published 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.

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ISBN
978-1-56478-551-0
Publisher
Dalkey Archive


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on July 15, 2009

Satire may be what closes on Saturday night, but it is nevertheless a powerful form of dramatic expression. In this first published collection of his plays, Reed takes on a half-dozen contemporary issues and causes, among them radical feminism (in Mother Hubbard) and religious hypocrisy (in The Preacher and the Rapper), in his distinctive style. Over the last few decade...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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