
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.
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