Slaveroad: An Autobiography

by John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman’s “slaveroad” is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds, and persists. In a section of “Slaveroad,” called “Sheppard”, William Henry Sheppard, a descendant of enslaved Virginians, travels back to Africa where he works as a missionary, converting Africans to Christianity alongside his Southern white colleague. Wideman imagines drinking afternoon tea with Lucy Gant Sheppard, William’s wife, who was on her own slaveroad, as she experienced her husband’s adultery with the African women he was trying to convert. In “Penn Station,” Wideman’s brother, after being confined forty-four years in prison, travels from Pittsburgh to New York. As Wideman awaits his brother, he asks, “How will I distinguish my brother from the dead. Dead passengers on the slaveroad.” An impassioned, searching work,?Slaveroad?is one man’s reckoning with a uniquely American lineage and the ways that the past haunts the “It’s here. Now. Where we are. What we are. A story compounded of stories told, retold, untold, not told.”

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Race, African American, Audiobook, Africa

1 pages, Audio CD

Published October 8, 2024

About the author

A widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal.

In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.

His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.

He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wanted to read this since before it came out, so i was shocked it's one of the least read books i've ever seen on goodreads.

once i'd finished, i both got it and didn't.

the whole time i was reading this book, my main thought was "i shouldn't be reading this book."

john edgar wideman is under-read on goodreads, but was one of the most critically acclaimed authors of the 80s and the first to win the pen/faulkner award twice. his most widely read books and his award winners are 40 years old.

i maybe should not have started here, with an unknown new release. 

there was a lot of brilliance here, but it never quite coalesced into brilliance itself. in my unease at reading a book of almosts, i kept googling the author, reading interviews and excerpts and his wikipedia page.

this armed me for the back half of this book, which dissolves without comment into memoir. 

wideman sets up a group of real people, and an interesting theory in the "slaveroad," but he fails to put it all together. even the ultimate pivot into his own memories could've served it, but the book abruptly ends without much to say.

bottom line: a less-brilliant work by a still-brilliant author.

(thanks to the publisher for the copy)

[Zea · Rating 5 out of 5]

wideman is one of our great thinkers and this book, though imperfect, has a ton to offer. expect to hear a lot more about this one. they should call him john edgar wiseman!!

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exquisite language. A disjointed genre mashup. We have essays. Biography. Historical fiction. Stream-of-consciousness. With all this going on, it’s hard for the book to find its groove. But the prose is a constant motivator, and so though at times you’ll feel disoriented, distracted, discouraged and maybe a bit disappointed, let the prose be your guide through the fog and clouds and read to see the sunny side of this ultimately courageous and inventive approach to book writing. If he doesn’t prove anything other than the fact he is a great writer, that is more than enough to recommend this work. Thank you to Edelweiss and Scribner for an advanced DRC. Book is available now!

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5 arc gifted by the publisher

This is a very different book to read and an even harder one to review. Since it’s a blend of fiction/history/autobiography/metafiction, I’m never quite sure what is the authors experience and what is the “story”. Especially when the author will then question if the writer’s responsibility is to tell a story a certain way and whether there are ethical considerations in distorting a story that might’ve been based on real life.

I think this is intentional but the structure dilutes the emotional buildup, half the time I’m just wondering what I’m reading 😅

The writing is also very stream of consciousness and a bit rambly. There are sentences that span an entire paragraph and paragraphs that are two pages long.

So while I think the premise is interesting, I can’t say I enjoyed the reading experience.

[mytreyi · Rating 3 out of 5]

the concept was interesting
even the disconnected asynchronous timelines were fascinating
what seems like a missed opportunity is a solid story like, what were the details of characters associations and linkages of their stories of arrival or departure? some parts of the book were very descriptive, I could almost imagine myself inside the slave ship. thank you , it has been an experience

[Michael Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another tour de force by one of American’s most prolific writers.

[David Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Slaveroad, I was reminded of Edward Said’s idea of artists’ “late style”: a tendency towards fragmentation rather than a determined whole. Wideman’s fragments of memory, philosophy, history may frustrate a reader’s expectations of cohesion but jostle in ways that provoke in ways like few writers I can think of.

[Jesse Hassinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of interconnected essays or a collection of thoughts across different days; a lyric poem told in prose or a fictional narrative about real people in which time is flattened and expanded, shuffled and become non-existent. Wideman allows his readers entry into his mind, a jumble with references and ideas, thoughts and musings, about what it means to live in a time of tyranny, here in the 21st century and in the 19th and in the 17th, a time of unending tyranny and a time of trying to fathom the methods of survival. A song of the unsung uncounted and of the known and revered who all walk the slaveroad that was birthed in the minds of one people who told a story of superiority and it was believed down through recorded history. Impossible to unmake yet impossible to live upon, this paradox poisons everyone on the slaveroad, which is everyone on the earth. To be sure: answers cannot be found, compassion is equally met with hatred and so not much can change. There is hope as much as there is pessimism and yet we have no choice but to continue onward. Step by cautious step along the slaveroad, which, perhaps, one day might no longer be known as such. Though by then these words will have been forgotten. And perhaps the better we will be for it.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy spending time with Wideman, even here in his stream-of-consciousness mode, but this is not his best work.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

"if we deny our acts, our history, our words, our fears about others and ourselves, we may very well lose precious parts of multiple truths holding, keeping us alive. Our homes, families, nation, dreams alive on this treacherous slaveroad we all ride" (172).

This another John Edgar Wideman masterpiece that I've read deeply, taking me into a space of sorrow, grief, heartbreak as in this work, Professor Wideman writes two types of memoirs: both an actual autobiography, and an imagined memoir that delves into the legacy of systemic racism and slavery in our nation, "and though you remain you, you and only you, you are also somebody so much like you that you can't always tell the difference on this slaveroad" (12).

First, the imagined memoir is Professor Wideman taking the reader into the world of William Henry Sheppard, a man who is considered "colored" because of what Jim Crow laws deemed his bloodline to be- though he is partially white. Sheppard goes off to Africa to convert Africans into Christianity, and Wideman explores this story with that of Chinua Achebe's relationship with "the horror" that Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" explores, and of Achebe's anger that led him to writing the masterpiece "Things Fall Apart" as a response to Conrad's racist attitude; and making sense of Sheppard's own fraught, and imagined history, "words separating each one of us from the other one. Separating languages each person speaks, each of us alone in vast silence beyond words" (3).

The second part of Wideman's book is his actual memoir. I have read in other books of his that he is constantly trying to make sense with and reconciling, and fighting the emotions of his brother having been incarcerated, and of his own son also incarcerated in Arizona to this day. Wideman is constantly grieving, filled with sorrow that the loves of his life have suffered systemic racism in such a way that is neverending, "I will do my best this time...to accomplish more than simply expressing deep regret about how irresistible, tragic, predictable, inevitable it is for most of us to become lost on the slaveroad" (132). This is certainly a theme that has come up time and time again from the books of his that I've read.

Grief always leads to feelings of despair and displacement, into a mindset that makes one not feel welcome, and lost. In his chapter "Here", Wideman writes about feeling that he does not belong in New York City- a city that is supposed to be the sanctuary of dreams for those looking for a better life in a fraught America, "no matter how much you learn, deny, improve, forget, improvise, you remain among the lost" (113).

It's one of the saddest essays I've read about grief- and this book is bitter, bleak, and not for the faint of heart. It's for those who wish to listen, to listen to a story that keeps going on repeat because of past traumas, both real and imagined, "words of stories imitate time, like a poor man's play money imitates riches of the rich" (128).

As someone who is often attracted to sad stories, and to stories that are about marginalized communities, stories that I know connect to my own life and lived experiences- life stops for a book like this. To learn, to feel, and to be sad. I think that's okay to always feel haunted.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read several Wideman novels back in the 80s and 90s when they originally came out and loved his style, his stories, and his proud perspective. Reading (listening, actually) Slaveroad reminded me why I enjoyed his writing and, at the same time, showed how it has changed and grown. As an "auto-"biography," it is daring and challenging, but never boring. Even his repetitions (especially, "All stories are useful") feel like a poetic refrain, tying sections together and reminding us that all writing is just stories, whether based in personal experience, "factual" history, or imagined what-if-ism. If the story rings true and holds together with the other stories being told, all are useful in understanding who Wideman believes himself to be or -- at least -- wants us to believe, for the moment, he is. As others have noted, this is a late life work and, like Chaucer and Shakespeare for two examples, pulls at the possibilities of narrative, even challenging to be boring or seemingly disconnected pieces, in short "artless art."

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful blend of fiction and nonfiction rich in language and a writing style that was a pleasure to experience.

A distillation of the moral arc centuries old and still straining for resolution.

[CL · Rating 3 out of 5]

It worked ok as an audiobook. I think I would have struggled to keep my eyeballs on track if I were reading a physical book. I’ll have to reflect more on what else I think about this.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book was like driving up Lombard St in San Francisco. Be prepared to shift gears and be prepared for an exhilarating ride with constant shifting.

[Chiara Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

lots of great insights and the writing is so impressive - but it was so difficult to follow and not a pleasant reading experience

[LV · Rating 4 out of 5]

Một đêm tôi bước kiên trì trong khao khát và nói với tất cả tên tôi là John con của loài người. Họ gật đầu hàm nghiến trong gió dại. Lời hứa của tự do biến đêm thành cơn đói nhưng tôi chỉ muốn John lời hứa của hiện tồn.