utterly in the dark as to what the rest was like." Its reference symbolizes the confusion and lack of descriptiveness that came from such an idol. In his preface to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre uses the phrase when speaking of revolutionary violence being diverted into native African religion: "Mumbo-Jumbo and all the idols of the tribe come down among them, rule over their violence and waste it in trances until it is exhausted". In Vachel Lindsay's poem The Congo, Mumbo Jumbo is used as a metaphor for the pagan religion followed by the Africans he encounters. The poem, at the end of each of three sections, repeats the phrase "Mumbo Jumbo will hoodoo you". In Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, the character Jubal speaks of Mumbo Jumbo as the "God of the Congo" towards the end of the novel in a discourse on the meaning of religions. In Roots by Alex Haley, the Mumbo Jumbo is also mentioned in the context of tribal men disciplining disobedient wives. In the 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs, when describing the limited vocabulary of one character, it is stated that "The lexicon of a Negro from the cannibalistic tribe Mumbo-Jumbo comprises three hundred words." See also Ajam Gibberish Jargon Mambo (Vodou) Simlish Superstition References English phrases