Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)

Ishmael Reed is a prominent American poet, novelist, and scholar. Reed was born on
February 22nd, 1938 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and raised in Buffalo, New York.
He attended the University of New York at Buffalo. Though he did not finish school for
financial reasons, the University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 1995.

Reed uses ‘Neohoodooism’ in his work. Based on Hoodoo, a syncretic (fusion of

different thoughts) religion that absorbs West African religious practices, Reed turned
this concept of syncretism into a literary method that combines aspects of ‘standard’
English, including dialect, slang, argot, neologisms, or rhyme, with less ‘standard’
language, taken from the streets, popular music, and television. By mixing language
from different sources, Reed employs expressions that can both evoke interest and
humor through seeming incongruities and creates the illusion of real speech. Reed’s
combinatory, or syncretic, method extends to his poetry as well. Reed’s early poems
draw from Afro-American and Anglo-American historical and popular traditions—two
distinct but intertwined sources for the Afro-American aesthetic. Reed’s work has
always sought to combine traditions, approaches, and values.

Summary of Mumbo Jumbo

It is 1920 and the Jes Grew phenomenon is spreading, first taking over New
Orleans, then Chicago, and making its way to New York. Jes Grew is Blackness
incarnate, manifested in music, singing, dancing, sex, and Life itself. It disturbs the
pillars of Western Civilization, which is committed to stamping it out.

The resistance is the Atonists, particularly the Teutonics, an ancient secret society,
and their militant wing is the Wallflower Order. They most recently tried to obliterate
Jes Grew in the 1890s but did not do such a great job. Their plan now is to install an
anti-Jes-Grew president, Warren Harding, and groom a Talking Android who will
spread the message that Jes Grew is actually anti-Black, getting people to turn
against it.

The Atonists not only have Jes Grew to deal with but also the Mu’tafikah, art
“thieves” committed to taking what the West looted for their museums and sending it
back where it belongs.
The man spearheading the effort to spread Jes Grew and destroy its enemies is
astro-detective PaPa LaBas, a powerful obeah-man who holds court at the Mumbo
Jumbo Kathedral in Harlem. He works with Berbelang, who has recently moved to
the Mu’tafikah, Earline, and Charlotte, who has left to go to the stage.
At a party one evening, LaBas connects with Black Herman, a noted occultist. The
two speak with the irascible Abdul Hamid, a publisher and Black Nationalist, who
chastises them for filling people’s heads with nonsense. They listen to him and
challenge his views, but they make no headway. Abdul leaves, saying he has to
translate a book that will shake everyone up.
Hinckle Von Hampton is an elegantly dressed old white man who is secretly
thousands of years old. He is an original Knights Templar and is here to agitate the
Order. He does so by publishing an account of their war in Haiti, which was
supposed to be a secret. He is called into the Hierophant 1’s office, where the
Hierophant demands the sacred Book he knows Hinckle possesses. If this Book
unites with its music, Jes Grew will be unstoppable.

Hinckle says he does not have it and has sent it around in a chain with fourteen
different people. Only he can bring it together, which he promises to do if the
Hierophant will give the Templars back their power. The Hierophant is reluctant but
has no choice.

Hinckle’s first part of the plan is to publish a magazine, The Benign Monster, which
will give him the facade of being a Negrophile (one who support Black). The
magazine became infamous and is banned as pornography in some cities. Hinckle
hires a newcomer to the city, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson, a rather naive Black
Marxist who is happy to do Hinckle's command.
Hinckle and his compatriot, Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, track the Book to Abdul,
who tells them he no longer has it, as he has sent it to a publisher. They kill him.

PaPa is the one who actually finds the body when he comes to talk to Abdul; he also
finds a cryptic (mysterious) note in his hand.

Jes Grew continues to spread, and the Mu’tafikah are actively breaking into
museums and taking the works of art that were looted from Africa, Asia, and South
America. PaPa LaBas and Black Herman are summoned to a ship docked in the
harbor. There they meet a man from Haiti, Benoit Battraville, who tells them what is
really happening in Haiti. He also speaks with them for hours about the history of the
Atonists trying to stamp out the Work; he advises that PaPa and Black Herman must
be on the lookout for a man in the city who is trying to stop Jes Grew by creating a
Talking Android.
The intelligence is correct, as Hinckle is desperately trying to put the Android part of
the plan into effect. He eventually decides he can use his loyal writer W.W.
Jefferson, but they will have to whiten his skin tone first. Jefferson is reluctant and
agrees, but they do not get very far before his imposing Reverend father bursts in
and interrupts the process, forcibly taking his son away from the hedonistic
(materialistic) city and these racist white men.

Hinckle now turns to putting blackface on Gould, preparing for him to attend a
notable gala (festival) where he can spread the ideas of Jes Grew being derivative
and anti-modern to the elite Black crowd.

While all of this is going on, the Hierophant receives a phone call from a powerful
tycoon (fuedal lord), Walter Mellon. They gloat that Jes Grew has been slowing, but
Mellon suggests taking stronger methods. He will initiate an economic panic and
thus make it harder for people to afford radios and for musicians to subsist (exist).
At the gala, Gould, tricking the guests in his disguise as a Black poet, begins to utter
his offensive verse. He is interrupted by PaPa LaBas and Black Herman, who
expose Gould for what he is and announce that Hinckle is guilty. Some of the guests
want to know what he is guilty of, as Hinckle has presented himself as a supportive
white patron of the Black arts, so PaPa and Black Herman begin a long history of the
Work—its origins in Ancient Egypt; its censure by Atonists; its spreading through
initiates and the Book of Thoth, which was the written Tet of the music and dancing;
the vicissitudes of its power throughout the centuries; and how Jes Grew has come
to evolve to its current moment. They tell of Hinckle’s murder of Abdul and how they
managed to find the box with the text in it, thanks to the note they deciphered from
Abdul.
To PaPa and Black Herman’s chagrin (pattikapeduka), though, the box that
putatively contained Abdul’s manuscript is empty, and PaPa later reads a
posthumously postmarked letter from Abdul saying he burnt the Text because it was
too lurid. (violent and sensational)

PaPa and Black Herman are undiscouraged from their mission of justice, however,
and take their two captives to Battraville. Battraville tells them Jes Grew is indeed
dissolved for the moment, and he knows why and cannot say, but that the Americans
will figure it out for themselves. Jes Grew will never fully die because it is life itself,
and there is no end to life.

In an epilogue, we are now in the 1970s; PaPa is 100 years old and still in perfect
health. He gives an annual talk on Jes Grew and its history to students, which he
delights in. There were many intervening decades in which Jes Grew lay fallow, but
now the 1970s is bringing it back again because time is a pendulum, not a river.

Character List

PaPa LaBas

The main protagonist of the novel is a middle-aged, Black private ("astro") detective on a quest to
locate a secret sacred Text that matches and bolsters the power of Jes Grew. Mythical origin
stories have spread around him, and people are in awe of his powers; he is a "noonday HooDoo,
fugitive-hermit, obeah-man, botanist, animal impersonator, 2-headed man" (45) and is in
excellent health. He attributes this health and power to his "Knockings" and respect for the loa.
His headquarters is the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral, where he works to uncover the conspiracy to
prevent Jes Grew from spreading. In his role as a detective, he is looking for Jes Grew's text,
trying to subvert the Order, looking for the "White Host," and generally endeavoring to make
Black culture visible, protected, and expansionary. He does not succeed in procuring the Text but
is successful using other metrics. At the end of the novel, it is the 1970s and he is 100 years old,
delighting in the return of Jes Grew via funk.
Hinckle Von Vampton

The novel’s antagonist is an indeterminate age, but certainly the fact that he was actually a
member of the Knights Templar is indicative of just long he has been around. He is an unctuous,
grotesque but elegant man who puts on the guise of a "Negrophile" as he endeavors to "save"
Western Civilization from the Black influence. He is thus on a quest to locate the sacred Text, but
for a completely different reason than PaPa. He works for the Sun, but only to get the Wallflower
Order's attention by releasing a story of Haiti. When this results in a meeting with the Hierophant
1, he announces his plan to restore the reputation of the Templars, since eroded, by ending Jes
Grew. While Jes Grew fails for other reasons, Hinckle is exposed and apprehended by PaPa and
Black Herman and sent to Battraville for justice.
Abdul Hamid
The traitorous editor of a magazine devoted to the Black Muslim; he takes it upon himself to
destroy the Text for what seem to be very good reasons, in his mind: the religion contained within
imposes the same kind of authoritarian order as its Judaic and Christian counterparts that
overwhelmed it in history. He is zealous, conservative, and, as Reed paints him, misguided.
Hinckle and Gould kill him when he tells them he no longer is in possession of the sacred Text,
which came to him (as we later learn) through Buddy Jackson.
Biff Musclewhite

Biff's day job is curating the Center of Art Detention, but in fact, he is a killer for hire in the
employ of the Wallflower Order. He takes out Berbelang and Charlotte, and he convinces Thor
Wintergreen to betray his friends. He is racist, selfish, prideful, and indelibly committed to the
Atonist cause.
Berbelang

One-time member of the Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral working in concert with PaPa LaBas,
Berbelang becomes the leader of an art-napping organization called the Mu’tafikah, which steals
from the Center of Art Detention museums with the purpose of returning non-Western, looted art
to the representatives of their rightful owners. He is killed by Biff Musclewhite.
Hubert "Safecracker" Gould

A white undercover agent in the service of Von Vampton. He adopts the cultural abomination of
blackface to become the Talking Android, and he is given over to Battraville for justice at the end
of the novel.
Earline

A young, pretty Black woman who works at the Kathedral. She is originally skeptical of Jes Grew
but comes to believe its power after she is possessed by the loa Erzulie.

Themes
Time
As Reed famously says in his novel, time isn't a river: it's a pendulum. What he means by this is
that linear, chronological conceptions of time, especially in the rendering of history and fiction, are
not effective or accurate in conveying what things are really like.

Neo-HooDoo

Christianity—represented as, more or less, Atonism—is aggressive, affiliated with colonizers, racists, and
oppressors throughout history. It has a singular worldview and is intent on establishing hierarchies.

The Danger of a Single Idea

One of the reasons Hinckle likes Woodrow Wilson Jefferson for his Black
perspective is that he has a singular, totalizing focus guiding him—in his case, it's
Marxism (similarly, in Hamid's case it's Black Nationalism—and any single,
monolithic worldview or ideology is a danger.
Symbol: LaBas's Dog
PaPa LaBas is brought to court because his dog defecated on the altar at St.
Patrick's Cathedral, which isn't supposed to be read as an act of petty vandalism or a
joke; rather, it is a symbolic act that conveys how LaBas feels about Christianity, with
all of its violent and cruel oppression of non-Christian religions and, by extension,
peoples. It is an act of desecration that is justified in his mind, for while small and
forgettable, such an act is still a bold, symbolic assertion of his antipathy toward this
version of God.

Motif: Colors
The colors of red and black often appear in the novel, particularly in the Kathedral
and Benoit Battraville's ship. Reed writes of the former, "the room is decorated in
black red and gold" (49) and of the latter, "the colors of the room are black and red,
the walls are red, the floor is black...the central post is red" (131). These colors are
historically significant for those of the African diaspora, with red symbolizing the
blood shed by the enslaved and black symbolizing the color of their skin. These
colors, along with green, were also part of the Pan-African flag, conceived of by
Marcus Garvey in the 1920s.

Motif: Intertextuality
Scattered throughout the novel without any captions or explanatory information are
photographs, quotes, book and newspaper excerpts, and other sources. These are
central to the plot though Reed does not tell us how to use them; he refuses to be
the sole "author" of the text, thus mirroring what we admire in Jes Grew and deplore
in Atonism. They open up his novel to other worlds, realities, points of view, and
points in time; they enliven, perplex, complicate, and elucidate.

Motif: Jazz
Jazz is part of the plot of the novel, as many of the characters meet at clubs, listen to
music, experience Jes Grew through the music, and more. However, it is also part of
the structure of the novel, for its rhythms, its improvisation, its syncopation, its
collaborative impulses, and the fact that it is wholly a Black cultural creation informs
Reed's work. We see how disparate storylines intermingle and then diverge, how
there are multiple climaxes, and how history, religion, myth, and fiction work together
to create a harmonious—but sometimes disharmonious—whole.

Symbol: Erzulie
Reed uses Erzulie, the Voodoo goddess/loa of love, to symbolize a larger history. As
critic Joan Dayan writes, Erzulie was "a goddess was born on the soil of Haiti who
has no precedent in Yorubaland or Dahomey. In her varying incarnations, her many
faces, she bears the extremes of colonial history. Whether the pale and elegant
Erzulie-Freda or the cold-hearted, savage Erzulie-ge-rouge, she dramatizes a
specific historiography of women's experience in Haiti and throughout the
Caribbean." His choice to have Earline taken over by Erzulie is not to simply
entertain, nor even to offer opportunities for LaBas and Black Herman to exercise
their powers, but rather to comment upon Black women's history and identity.