An Essay by Ishmael Reed

My writing changed after I moved to Oakland in 1979.

After moving from Buffalo, New York in 1962, I lived in artistic enclaves, the suburbs and other unreal areas of the American landscape.

In California, I lived in Echo Park Canyon, a Los Angeles neighborhood inhabited mainly by white retirees. In Northern California, I lived in the permanently youthful Berkeley flatlands and in the Hills.

My apartment was located in a mansion in front of which lay a beautiful Zen garden. It was in that house, during the early seventies, that I wrote my third novel, Mumbo Jumbo.

After living in El Cerrito for a few years, we bought a huge Victorian house on 53rd Street. One of the reasons we purchased the house was because a friend with psychic gifts said that she had dreamed we lived in this house. While we were about to settle on buying a house on Market Street, she said “the house you want is around the corner.” It was.

This house, located near Children's Hospital, affords me some of the pleasures of Oakland. I'm about eight minutes from the Emeryville Market, theaters, a jazz club, and bookstores. Lake Merritt is also close by. De Lauer's Newsstand, an Oakland treasure, is also available, as well as a variety of ethnic restaurants.

Living in this house has also brought me in contact with some of the grim realities of urban life. I found that the city services which we took for granted in El Cerrito, our last suburban residence before moving to Oakland, were unavailable to us.

In Oakland, we came into direct contact with the side effects of the crack trade. But, we also learned that most citizens who reside in the inner-city are decent and caring. I had to be reminded of that. My play, Hubba City, which was commissioned by the late Nora Vaughn of the Black Repertory Theater, was based upon what I viewed as the inaction of the police and city officials in dealing with the crack problem.

Gethsemane Park, an opera (gospera) currently playing at the Black Repertory Theater, addresses the issues of homelessness, poverty and faith -- themes which I would never have developed writing in the house we rented on Terrace Drive in El Cerrito.

— Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed is a playwright, novelist and poet.