Airing Dirty Laundry - Softcover

Reed, Ishmael

3.74

38 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201408325 ISBN 13: 9780201408324

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 1994

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Nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, Ishmael Reed now returns with a boisterous and irreverent collection of nonfiction writing. "Always provocative, sometimes infuriating, this collection reminds us that the purpose of art is not to confirm and coddle but to provoke and confront."-- The New York Times Book Review.

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From Library Journal:

The title of this book is grounded in the author's conviction that he has "for years aired the dirty laundry of the black, white, yellow, and brown community." So he has, and in statements that are usually unequivocally absolute. Feminists, National Public Radio, think-tankers, television commentators and producers, and editors and columnists of certain magazines and newspapers seem to have the most dirty laundry, particularly as the dirtiness relates to the image of black males. Reed, the author of Japanese by Spring ( LJ 1/93), among many other works, does not ignore his own image, so to speak. Alice Walker, Anita Hill, and Desiree Washington should feel the sting of his opinions; Elaine Brown, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston are in for praise. All of it--especially Reed's reflection on American poetry and black literature--is attention-getting, alive with thought and feeling. Reed has given the reader much to ponder.
- Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

A noted African American novelist, poet, and critic submits a collection of essays, 36 in toto, spanning his career from 1978 to 1983; about half of the essays have been previously published in various periodicals. The "pilloring of black males," a phrase he uses in one of the pieces, could be taken as the theme that stitches all of them together. Reed's anger is tempered, but barely, as he addresses such specific topics as the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings and the Rodney King trial and such African American figures as writer John Edgar Wideman and boxer Muhammad Ali. But the ax he grinds is bigger than any particular subject matter: his chief bugbear being the double standard by which black behavior is judged vis-{...}a-vis white behavior, not only in the white-dominated media but in the white public mind. These essays are provocative to the highest degree, but isn't that the best use of the essay form, to provoke highly? Brad Hooper

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