Reckless Eyeballing Summary
Although the dust jacket for Reckless Eyeballing says the novel is "men vs. women, blacks vs. Jews, North vs.
South, and Ishmael Reed vs. everybody," certainly some of the alliances are more positive than they sound. The novel's central character, for example, playwright Ian Ball, has an excellent working relationship with his Jewish director, and while the battle lines between men and women are clearly drawn, there is an attempt at fusion by the book's end.
Reed's primary focus in Reckless Eyeballing is on the black women writers who routinely display black men in ways that mirror society's general misconception of them. Reed came under heavy criticism for this novel, as many critics saw the book as a thinly veiled attack on Alice Walker and The Color Purple (1982). The similarities between Walker and her novel and Reed's fictional character and her play are striking...
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Study Pack
The Reckless Eyeballing Study Pack contains:
Reckless Eyeballing Short Guide
Ishmael Reed Biographies (6)
1,600 words, approx. 6 pages
A novelist, journalist, and playwright, American writer Ishmael Reed (born 1938) has been cited by critics as among the greatest contemporary African American literary figures of his generation.Accord...
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2,273 words, approx. 8 pages
Ishmael Reed 's most important work has been his five novels, though he is also the author of two books of poetry, one nominated for a National Book Award. His experimental fiction has the stamp of po...
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2,300 words, approx. 8 pages
Ishmael Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of Bennie and Thelma Coleman Reed. At age four he moved with his mother to Buffalo, New York, where later he attended the University of Buffalo...
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9,426 words, approx. 32 pages
"The most revolutionary black novelist who has appeared in print thus far," wrote Nick Aaron Ford as early as 1971, "is Ishmael Reed ." Nick Aaron Ford, one of the elder statesmen of Afro-American li...
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4,793 words, approx. 16 pages
Ishmael Reed's importance to contemporary literary studies stems in part from his ability to channel his encyclopedic historical, political, and cultural knowledge into syncretic poetry and prose that...
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8,343 words, approx. 28 pages
Ishmael Reed is one of America's leading proponents of multiculturalism. His commitment to the transformation of America into a truly multicultural society has informed his writing and has also been e...
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