African American Canon Research Articles

The Limbs of Osiris: Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and Hollywood's The Mummy

of the colonial British hegemony, displaces itself, and presents a subverted and subversive message. Ishmael Reed uses the myths of Egypt-of Isis, Osiris and the Book of Thoth-as an analogy for the condition of the African American canon in the Western hegemonic world. According to Robert Elliot Fox, Mumbo Jumbo reflects Reed's own attempts to gather up the scattered fragments of a tradition in order to restore a culture, for the scattering of Osiris's limbs is a clear metaphor for the [African] Diaspora (54). The action of the novel reifies this search in the Mu'tafikah, a multi-cultural group organized to retrieve art from the Center of Art Detention located at 82nd St. and 5th Ave. or the

BUILDING A TRADITION: AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY

Robert Bone. Down Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. xxviii + 328 pp. Margaret Perry, ed. The Short Fiction of Rudolph Fisher. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. xiv + 228 pp. Deborah E. McDowell and Arnold Rampersand, eds. Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. xiii + 172 pp. Kerry McSweeney. Invisible Man: Race and Identity. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. xiv + 139 pp. Literary scholarship is just beginning to catch up with the demand for materials to support developing university programs in African-American studies. These four books suggest the breadth and depth of the materials now becoming available; each of these studies provides either detailed information about a single author or work, or significant insight into the literary traditions that surround the development of an African-American canon. Each can be recommended without hesitation.

Building the African-American Canon

Building the African-American Canon