Mumbo Jumbo (novel)

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Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel by Ishmael Reed. It centers on a dance mania and spiritual ″anti-plague″ of African origin called Jes’ Grew, whose spread across the United States brings about the Jazz Age. The action takes place in the 1920s New York, where Papa LaBas, a Vodou practitioner, searches for a sacred anthology that will allow Jes’ Grew to “go pandemic.” He is opposed by a secret society called the Atonist order, which seeks to destroy Jes’ Grew in the name of protecting their Eurocentric vision of Western civilization. The novel uses myth, allegory, conspiracy, and caricature to satirically reimagine the Harlem Renaissance, in a style that is generally considered postmodern. One of its main themes is the relationship between African-American culture and American culture more broadly—in particular, recurring cycles of appreciation and marginalization. Another is cultural appropriation, including both the mainstream assimilation of black creative expression and the struggle of black...

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