I get the feeling Ishmael Reed doesn't really like white people.
Mumbo Jumbo has to be, without a doubt, the weirdest, craziest, stupid book I have ever read. However, there is a lot of social commentary intertwined with the odd plot. One thing I picked up on was Ishmael Reed's constant satorization of white people, which I thought was kind of funny and pretty interesting. Ishmael Reed often makes fun of white people, almost to a point where it becomes offensive at some point. I think that Reed is basically inviting white people to be offended when he includes the point of view of people in Africa when white colonizers first entered Africa. PaPa LaBas comes across some lampoons in Abdul's office. He shows the point of view of the African people, and they go in on the appearance of white people. They say their skin looks like chalk and they are depicted as ridiculously ugly. The Africans had a great sense of humor which the Christians stamped out and instead brought "glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness...