Mumbo Jumbo (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ishmael Reed
- First Published: 1972
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Satire
- Time of Work: 1920’s
- Setting: Harlem in New York City
- Principal Characters: PaPa LaBas, Berbelang, Black Herman, Hinckle Von Vampton, Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, Biff Musclewhite
- Genres: Long fiction, Satire, Mystery and detective literature
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Blacks, Supernatural, New York City, Religion, Harlem Renaissance, 1920’s, Spiritual life or spirituality, Cults, Metaphysics
- Locales: Harlem, NY, New Orleans, LA, Washington, D.C.
The Story:
One night in 1920, the mayor of New Orleans was drinking bootlegged gin with his mistress when a messenger announced the outbreak of Jes Grew, a “psychic epidemic” causing African Americans to thrash in ecstasy and to lust for meaning in life. By the next morning, ten thousand people had contracted the disease, which was spreading rapidly across America.
PaPa LaBas, a conjure man who carried “Jes Grew in him like most other folk carry genes,” ran Jes Grew Kathedral and represented the old ways of Jes Grew, specializing in “Black astrology charts,...
[The entire page is 2496 words long]
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