Flight to Canada

Discuss the historical and time issues in Ishmael Reed's "Flight to Canada" how effective is the format? Did you find the humor offensive or just?

use at least one direct quote from the peom

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The premise of this is that of an escaped slave from the American South boarding a a plane to Canada. Yup, there is a time issue here. Time skips all over the place in this book. What passes for "present" day in the book jumps through the Civil War era all the way to what we would consider "today". I picked this book up when I did an American history course back in the 1990's. It was confusing. I really didn't know what this author was trying to say. Was it a satire? If so I didn't find it very funny or satirical. THe time shifts made no sense to me nor did the author's references to other works like Uncle Tom's Cabin. Perhaps I was missing something clever but I did find it objectionable. The whole slave on a Jumbo jet trivialized what I see as a dismal time for all of humanity. Anyhow I don't have a copy so I can't reference any of this but I'm sure there is stuff about it on the net.