Description
Ishmael Reed has devoted his life to uncovering the neglected cultural and historical record of the United States, no matter how ugly it might be. He uses a full-court press: fiction, poetry, plays, songs, films, interviews, essays, and more. With Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, Reed is at his best: insightful, hard-hitting, eclectic, refreshing, caustic, entertaining, informative, and, yes, funny. The War of Rebellion still divides the United States. President Trump, and millions of southerners wish to maintain monuments to generals like Robert E. Lee. Yet those who actually fought under them ran away by the thousands. Some rebel generals, whom the famous pro-confederate propaganda film “Gone With The Wind” referred to as “Knights,” earned their massacre bona fides by murdering thousands of blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans, who were often unarmed. The “Knight” Robert E. Lee fought children during the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847. The children, Los niños heroes (pictured on the cover), refused to surrender and were slaughtered. The subjects addressed in this book of essays are vast. They include white nationalism, Donald Trump, Quentin Tarantino and Django, the musical Hamilton, Ferguson, Missouri, Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones, a different take on #metoo, the one-at-a-time tokenism of an elite, who chooses winners and losers among minority artists, the Alt-Right, the use of immigrants to shame black America, and much more. After The Complete Muhammad Ali, recognized by many as the “truly definitive book” on the champion, Ishmael Reed is back with another exciting book of essays that will stir up debate in the United States and abroad.
