Mumbo Jumbo is, in fact, not mumbo jumbo at all - for the term is most often used to refer to nonsense, to the kind of babbling that children use when they are attempting to conjure up supernatural forces to keep them home from an English test. There is also a certain racist sheen to the term, for it was once used to describe the way in which "primitive" people, including blacks, talk to each other. Ishmael Reed, in choosing to title his 1972 novel after such a derogatory term, is satirizing the generally racist view of the contributions of both Africa and African-Americans to both ancient and modern culture.
Reed's novel - and his attack on those individuals who consider African culture to be nothing more than "mumbo jumbo" is so effective because he does not simply argue that Africa and those in the African diaspora have contributed substantially to the body of the world's knowledge but by presenting in this book an example of the kind of literary brilliance that so many critics believe that Africans and African-Americans are incapable of producing. By showing that he is no primitive engaging in mumbo jumbo but an intelligent artist and an innovative stylist, he is demonstrating the fact that any black artist with sufficient talent and ambition can rise to the same level.
The work is a critique of the ways in blacks and whites have interacted from the beginning of human society through the present, from the classical world to the modern. Reed, who in this work mixes history with fiction, is a highly educated writer and he is interested in letting the reader know exactly how educated he is. This could be wearing even while it is understandable - given the fact that blacks are so often dismissed in terms of their intellectual abilities or accomplishments by whites - but Reed is charming about his erudition. It isn't often that a writer can let you know on every page that he knows that he is smarter than most of his readers and ye...