Catalin's History as Fiction Blog

When reading Mumbo Jumbo  by Ishamel Reed, the absurdness and radicality of some of the groups' ideas, such as the Wallflower Order and the Mu'tafikah, jump out to the reader as key parts of the book. When reading these parts we often disassociate what happens in Mumbo Jumbo  with what is happening in our world today, both because the book was published in 1972, almost 50 years ago, and the fact that it is set in 1920s America, almost 100 years ago. Even though the events and ideas of the characters seem very far away, the ideas still exist in American society today. Many of the characters in Mumbo Jumbo , such as some members of the Mu'tafikah, are working on the empowerment of African-American culture in western/white civilization. The Mu'tafikah themselves are working on taking back the artifacts white culture has stolen from different places around the world and returning them to their original location. They believe that returning the artifacts will ...

After we talked in class how some things in Ragtime  are completely made up and some things actually happened I did some research to make sure Coalhouse and his terror on New York weren't influenced by something that had actually happened. Even though it seemed to be a part of Doctorow's fictional aspects of the book (presumably we would know about some guy killing firemen all across New York and taking J.P. Morgan's library hostage...), you never know! All though just a quick Google search validated that there was no Coalhouse Walker Jr. terrorizing fire stations in early 20th century New York, I did stumble upon something else that had some vague (and some not so vague!) connections to Ragtime : the Wall Street bombing. When I was researching domestic terrorist attacks in early 20th century America, I at first didn't find any that seemed connected to the things that happened in Ragtime , as very few of the attacks actually happened in New York or the eastern Unite...