Writin' Is Fightin': Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper

by Ishmael Reed

A collection of editorials, book reviews, and essays by the noted and often controversial author features his views on "The Color Purple," a critique of "1984," and a study of the dramatist, August Wilson

Genres: Nonfiction

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.

Reed has been described as one of the most controversial writers. While his work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives, his energy and advocacy have centered more broadly on neglected peoples and perspectives irrespective of their cultural origins.

Reviews

[Daniel Polansky]

I love Reed’s early novels but this is…pretty weak beer. A collection of editorial and essays about controversies long forgotten, and inter-academic feuds which could never have been of much interest to anyone.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhilarating how ready to battle Reed is throughout. A good argument for forcing yourself to write positions all throughout your life. Only a fool fears to reveal that his views have changed over time.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

really dug the writing on oakland (which, as it turns out, was my neighborhood, albeit quite different - and far more gentrified - than what he describes here). and the pieces on august wilson & chester himes were nice as well. overall, however, way too dated (a satirical piece on the walter mondale campaign??), although i was momentarily amused by the revival of memories of the 'multiculture' wars of the 80s, which seem so ridiculously quaint now. would love to read some more current stuff by reed, so time to start sniffing around....

[RK Byers · Rating 4 out of 5]

i feel beat up after reading this.

[George Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writin’ Is Fightin’ collects essays by novelist Ishmael Reed from 1983 to 1988.

Some certainly are dated and of little interest today, for example, satirical pieces on what the Democrats should do about the 1984 election and how apartheid could survive the abolition of apartheid.

Of particular interest to me are Reed’s evaluations of other writers. He interviewed August Wilson, at the time when Fences was first being produced. Reed, a multiculturalist, takes some issue with Wilson, who holds a more Afrocentric view, but he appreciates Wilson as a playwright and predicts what Wilson would accomplish. Reed attempts to reclaim the reputation of Chester Himes, who was derided by James Baldwin (one of the three dedicatees of the book). The quotations from Himes’s work, however, generally do not support the reclamation.

Particularly poignant are a pair of essays about Oakland, California. The first, from 1983, depicts a community distressed but buoyed by neighbors who help each other. The second, from 1988, despairs over the effects of crack, particularly in the rise of gangs profiting from the drug. Reading this essay, one can understand the push for tougher prison sentences that became common at the time.

Even while recognizing the problem of gangs, Reed worries about the stereotyping of African American men as criminals. In one piece he castigates The Color Purple for depicting African American men as brutes, accusing film director Steven Spielberg, book author Alice Walker, and Walker supporter Gloria Steinem.

I have read three novels by Reed – The Freelance Pallbearers, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down, and Japanese by Spring – and I would recommend that a reader unfamiliar with Reed’s work try one of these before Writin’ Is Fightin’

[ñick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading for the autobiographical and critical pieces (the essays on Oakland, Chester Himes, John Edgar Wideman/Robert Wideman, August Wilson, and illiteracy in the United States are of special merit), but Reed’s writing on current affairs is often hamstrung by a lot of tiresome “neither right nor left” posturing. His principled iconoclasm is admirable, but his identification of broad political concepts like Feminism and Communism with out-of-touch Village Voice op-ed writers makes me feel like he’s throwing a few ideological babies out with the bathwater. He pulls his punches in a few places too, which weakens the pugilistic theme he goes for in a few of these essays. Repeated complaints about tokenism in the U.S. literary establishment, although perhaps not unfounded (I wouldn’t really know), are not substantiated with writers’ names or titles of works, which seems, to steal a phrase from another commenter, like pretty weak beer.

I’ll stand up for the Mondale/Goetz piece, though —replace Mondale with any milquetoast center-right U.S. Democrat and Goetz with any twitching foaming amerikkkan lunatic, e.g., Derek Chauvin or George Zimmerman, and you could just republish this essay every month or so without it ever growing stale.