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Bruder und Hüter
With novels like Damballah and Hiding Place, John Edgar Wideman began his career in an explicitly modernist vein--indeed, his chronicles of life in the Pittsburgh ghetto of Homewood had more than a trace of a Joycean accent. The autobiographical Brothers and Keepers, however, allowed the writer to find his own voice. Perhaps this dual portrait of the author and his brother Robby--serving, then and now, a life sentence for a murder committed during a bungled robbery--finally forced Wideman to fuse the modernist trappings of his earlier work with the storytelling traditions of African American culture. "My memories needed his," the author recalls. "Maybe the fact that we recall different things is crucial. Maybe they are foreground and background, propping each other up." In any case, the Rashomon-like result is a raw meditation on fate and family, as well as an indictment of our entire notion of crime and (especially) punishment.
371 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
77 books417 followersA 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
February 20, 2017
We Supposed to Die
Complicated family history can be wretched. If the complicated family history is that of a black American, it can well be unendurably tragic. John Edgar Wideman has such a family history: a brother sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1977; a son sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1986 (recently paroled); an uncle shot and killed in his own house. Being black in America exaggerates and accelerates all the typical problems of family life. And then adds a whole lot more.
Wideman writes as a man sitting on a knife-edge. How easily history could have been different. The slightest mis-calculation or mis-step or chance event and he could have been his brother locked up with no chance of release. While his brother broods continuously about what brought him to such a hopeless place, Wideman can only do the same and wonder at the consummate randomness of life in which there is no protection only the threat of the system.
His personal success in the system has produced, "A self no more or less in control than the countless other selves who each, for a time, seem to be running things." And even this tentative status is undermined in his conversations with his brother during the writing of the book. Not even his memories are secure. He is a man without a determinate history at all: " ...if his version of the past is real, then what's mine?" How honest is he really about his own life? How much of it has been wasted in not giving attention to that most important in it?
But Wideman is an artist. Every ounce of suffering and confusion and dissociation is used to produce something beautiful. He is a man, for example, who lives uneasily in two worlds. As a celebrated teacher and writer he has made it. But his siblings and extended family are where they always have been – largely struggling to maintain recognition of themselves as human beings. Wideman captures part of this state in his alternation between standard English and dialect. His prose in both is mesmerising. Each sets the other off as valuable and uniquely expressive.
This is a memoir which is hard to take. Not just because of its existential punch. The scenes of disintegration of the black community in Pittsburgh, of the rise of a compensatory drug culture, of the persistent and deep racism in the United States, of the expensive and counter-productive vindictiveness of the entire penal system were written forty years ago.
The events themselves occurred twenty years before that. Yet they could have been written last week. Even after eight years of a black man as president, arguably the most intelligent and articulate in its history, America appears even more violently intent on maintaining the subjugation of its black population.
Wideman's makes his purpose in writing clear, "I was trying to discover words to explain what was happening to black people." That he succeeds in this is beyond doubt. Only the effects of the words he has found are in question. They may not have been enough. His brother’s desperation in prison may sum the situation, "We see what's going down. We supposed to die."
Complicated family history can be wretched. If the complicated family history is that of a black American, it can well be unendurably tragic. John Edgar Wideman has such a family history: a brother sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1977; a son sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1986 (recently paroled); an uncle shot and killed in his own house. Being black in America exaggerates and accelerates all the typical problems of family life. And then adds a whole lot more.
Wideman writes as a man sitting on a knife-edge. How easily history could have been different. The slightest mis-calculation or mis-step or chance event and he could have been his brother locked up with no chance of release. While his brother broods continuously about what brought him to such a hopeless place, Wideman can only do the same and wonder at the consummate randomness of life in which there is no protection only the threat of the system.
His personal success in the system has produced, "A self no more or less in control than the countless other selves who each, for a time, seem to be running things." And even this tentative status is undermined in his conversations with his brother during the writing of the book. Not even his memories are secure. He is a man without a determinate history at all: " ...if his version of the past is real, then what's mine?" How honest is he really about his own life? How much of it has been wasted in not giving attention to that most important in it?
But Wideman is an artist. Every ounce of suffering and confusion and dissociation is used to produce something beautiful. He is a man, for example, who lives uneasily in two worlds. As a celebrated teacher and writer he has made it. But his siblings and extended family are where they always have been – largely struggling to maintain recognition of themselves as human beings. Wideman captures part of this state in his alternation between standard English and dialect. His prose in both is mesmerising. Each sets the other off as valuable and uniquely expressive.
This is a memoir which is hard to take. Not just because of its existential punch. The scenes of disintegration of the black community in Pittsburgh, of the rise of a compensatory drug culture, of the persistent and deep racism in the United States, of the expensive and counter-productive vindictiveness of the entire penal system were written forty years ago.
The events themselves occurred twenty years before that. Yet they could have been written last week. Even after eight years of a black man as president, arguably the most intelligent and articulate in its history, America appears even more violently intent on maintaining the subjugation of its black population.
Wideman's makes his purpose in writing clear, "I was trying to discover words to explain what was happening to black people." That he succeeds in this is beyond doubt. Only the effects of the words he has found are in question. They may not have been enough. His brother’s desperation in prison may sum the situation, "We see what's going down. We supposed to die."
December 3, 2020
This is a devastating, complex work which fully explores the ambiguities surrounding issues of racism, crime, and family in America. Wideman never allows himself to over-simplify anything, and the book is heartbreaking as it raises questions of loyalty, personal responsibility, and institutional injustice. It is also notable for its skillful evocation of place and mood, and the depths of family history. an incredible book - one of the best I've ever read.
August 22, 2020
1980s in downtown Pittsburgh, a story of two black brothers who took very different paths. The author, apparently a widely read author of many novels, tells the story of his brother as dictated from inside a penitentiary. The brother, Robby, is 10 years his junior and had been incarcerated for over a decade for his presence in a murder resulting from a botched robbery where he as present. But this is as much about the author, and his deeply conflicted inner life, as his brothers. He feels guilt as the failed “Keeper” of his brother (this term also used to discuss those who maintain the prison system) who strayed by seeking what he felt was his only path to glory, a street crime boss. The author took his out when he could, being smarter and luckier, and left his past behind by hundreds of miles. What I enjoyed about this book is the unvarnished outpouring, and richly detailed of life in urban black poverty in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s not easy to get this view from my safe, white, privileged vantage. Wideman alternates his experiences with his brother’s story, told in common, colorful slang. It explains how difficult it is to escape the environs of one’s upbringing, and the unique experience of being black in a world controlled by mostly white men. This isn’t a political statement; in fact, the author does a laudable job helping the reader understand what day to day life can be with rich prose and very little pontification. Poor Robby doesn’t recognize the risk of his dope habit and takes foolish risks in his unquenchable hustle for a little more cash. Only in prison can his trapped brain reckon the consequences of his actions and see his mistakes. The soul-crushing routine of prison stifles a creative and intelligent young man and, thankfully, his brother recovers his flame by sharing his story. I wonder where the brothers are now, and I would certainly love to hear there has been redemption. But I fear this is unlikely because of the fear instilled in law and order politics and business interests in the prison industry. An interesting aspect of the book is the period during the late 1960s, especially 1968, and how the MLK murder both empowered and destroyed key parts of our cities. This is a story of a family trying to hold together during turbulent times, centering on the one son that slipped away and may forever pay a price for the errors of his youthful ways.
Wideman is a teacher, and beautifully lays his process down in a preface from 2004 in this edition (xvi): “I write because I’m lonely….to remind myself I own a voice with the power to construct a thing of my world, no matter how private or subjective or useless to anyone else on the planet…”
Here he recounts the fertile history of his grandfather, part of the great migration from the south (p. 22): “He found a raw, dirty, double-dealing city. He learned its hills and rivers, the strange names of Dagos and Hunkies and Polacks who’d been drawn, as he had, by steel mills and coal mines, by the smoke and heat and dangerous work that meant any strong-backed, stubborn you man, even a black one, could earn pocketfuls of money. … Like so many others, he boarded in an overcrowded rooming house, working hard by day, partying hard at night against the keen edge of exhaustion. When his head finally hit the pillow, he didn’t care that the sheets were still warm from the body of the man working nights who rented the bed ten hours a day while Harry pulled his shit at the mill.”
Wideman illustrates the character of his beloved mother, the strength and glue of the family through hard times (p. 70): “Her easy disposition and sociability masked the intensity of her feelings. Her attitude to authority of any kind, doctors, clerks, police, bill collectors, newscasters, whites in general partook of her constitutional gentleness. She wasn’t docile or cowed. The power other people possessed or believed they possessed didn’t frighten her; she accommodated herself, offered something they could accept as deference but that was in fact the same resigned, alert attention she paid to roaches or weather or poverty, any of the givens outside herself that she never pushed herself or her point of view on people she didn’t know. …On the other hand, she knew the world was a vale of tears and one’s strength, granted by God to deal with life’s inevitable calamities, should not be squandered on small stuff.”
The brothers’ mother fretted her whole life over her family, especially Robbie, her youngest and she dealt with his “keepers” and the those administering the system as best she could as she saw her son slowing despairing from any hope whatsoever (p. 72): “She could see their side, but they steadfastly refused to see hers. And when she realized fairness was not forthcoming, she began to hate. In the lack of reciprocity, in the failure to grant that Robby was first a man, then a man who had done wrong, the institutions and individuals who took over control of his life denied not only his humanity but the very existence of the world that had nurtured him and nurtured her – the world of touching, laughing, suffering black people that established Robby’s claim to something more than a number.”
The author’s father, even in the 60s, was oddly missing from the book, but when he makes an appearance it is memorable as in this colorful bit that displays the author’s skill and dark humor (p. 106): “Daddy could still shake him up. Edgar Wideman was six foot tall and weighed around two hundred hard pounds. Robby knew Daddy could tear up his behind and knew that if he pushed the wrong way at the wrong time, Edgar would punch him out. My father’s rage, his fists were the atom bomb, the nuclear deterrent. Robby feared him so he gauged his misconduct with a diplomat’s finely honed sensitivity to consequence and repercussion. Yet Robby understood that he had launched himself on a collision course. His determination to become an independent power setting his own rules would bring on a confrontation with Daddy. The shit had hit the fan sooner or later, so it became a question of biding his time, of marshaling his forces, and convincing himself that he’d survive the holocaust generally intact.”
Here’s Robby, telling his story and how he started down his path, the rage of being black in America (p. 152): “How else I’m spozed to think? Couldn’t see myself on no porch in no rocking chair crying the blues. Like, what else I’m spozed to do? No way Ima be like the rest of the niggers scuffling and kissing ass to get by. Scuffling and licking ass till the day they die and the shame is they ain’t even getting by. They crawling. They stepped on. Mize well be roaches or some goddamn waterbugs. White man got em backed up in Homewood and he’s sprinkling roach power on em. He’s steady shaking and they steady dying. You know I ain’t making nothing up. You know I ain’t trying be funny. Cause you seen it. You run from it just like I did. You know the shit’s still coming down and it’s falling on everybody in Homewood. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me don’t, cause we both running. I’m in here but it’s still falling on me. It’s falling on Daddy and Mommy and Dave and Gene and Tish and all the kids. Falls till it knocks you down.”
Finally, the author openly shares his inner conflict about his relationship with his brother who so often is out of mind (p. 222): Gradually, I’m teaching myself to decompartmentalize. This book is part of the unlearning of my first response to my brother’s imprisonment. In spite of good intentions, I constantly backslide. In large matters, like arranging for Omar to accompany me on a visit, or small neglecting to relay somebody’s greeting to my brother or a hello from Robby to some friend on the outside, I’ll revert to my old ways. My oversights embarrass me, shake me up, because I’m reminded that in crucial ways my brother still doesn’t exist for me in the intervals between visits. The walls become higher, thicker, unbreachable when I allow myself to be part of the conspiracy.”
Wideman is a teacher, and beautifully lays his process down in a preface from 2004 in this edition (xvi): “I write because I’m lonely….to remind myself I own a voice with the power to construct a thing of my world, no matter how private or subjective or useless to anyone else on the planet…”
Here he recounts the fertile history of his grandfather, part of the great migration from the south (p. 22): “He found a raw, dirty, double-dealing city. He learned its hills and rivers, the strange names of Dagos and Hunkies and Polacks who’d been drawn, as he had, by steel mills and coal mines, by the smoke and heat and dangerous work that meant any strong-backed, stubborn you man, even a black one, could earn pocketfuls of money. … Like so many others, he boarded in an overcrowded rooming house, working hard by day, partying hard at night against the keen edge of exhaustion. When his head finally hit the pillow, he didn’t care that the sheets were still warm from the body of the man working nights who rented the bed ten hours a day while Harry pulled his shit at the mill.”
Wideman illustrates the character of his beloved mother, the strength and glue of the family through hard times (p. 70): “Her easy disposition and sociability masked the intensity of her feelings. Her attitude to authority of any kind, doctors, clerks, police, bill collectors, newscasters, whites in general partook of her constitutional gentleness. She wasn’t docile or cowed. The power other people possessed or believed they possessed didn’t frighten her; she accommodated herself, offered something they could accept as deference but that was in fact the same resigned, alert attention she paid to roaches or weather or poverty, any of the givens outside herself that she never pushed herself or her point of view on people she didn’t know. …On the other hand, she knew the world was a vale of tears and one’s strength, granted by God to deal with life’s inevitable calamities, should not be squandered on small stuff.”
The brothers’ mother fretted her whole life over her family, especially Robbie, her youngest and she dealt with his “keepers” and the those administering the system as best she could as she saw her son slowing despairing from any hope whatsoever (p. 72): “She could see their side, but they steadfastly refused to see hers. And when she realized fairness was not forthcoming, she began to hate. In the lack of reciprocity, in the failure to grant that Robby was first a man, then a man who had done wrong, the institutions and individuals who took over control of his life denied not only his humanity but the very existence of the world that had nurtured him and nurtured her – the world of touching, laughing, suffering black people that established Robby’s claim to something more than a number.”
The author’s father, even in the 60s, was oddly missing from the book, but when he makes an appearance it is memorable as in this colorful bit that displays the author’s skill and dark humor (p. 106): “Daddy could still shake him up. Edgar Wideman was six foot tall and weighed around two hundred hard pounds. Robby knew Daddy could tear up his behind and knew that if he pushed the wrong way at the wrong time, Edgar would punch him out. My father’s rage, his fists were the atom bomb, the nuclear deterrent. Robby feared him so he gauged his misconduct with a diplomat’s finely honed sensitivity to consequence and repercussion. Yet Robby understood that he had launched himself on a collision course. His determination to become an independent power setting his own rules would bring on a confrontation with Daddy. The shit had hit the fan sooner or later, so it became a question of biding his time, of marshaling his forces, and convincing himself that he’d survive the holocaust generally intact.”
Here’s Robby, telling his story and how he started down his path, the rage of being black in America (p. 152): “How else I’m spozed to think? Couldn’t see myself on no porch in no rocking chair crying the blues. Like, what else I’m spozed to do? No way Ima be like the rest of the niggers scuffling and kissing ass to get by. Scuffling and licking ass till the day they die and the shame is they ain’t even getting by. They crawling. They stepped on. Mize well be roaches or some goddamn waterbugs. White man got em backed up in Homewood and he’s sprinkling roach power on em. He’s steady shaking and they steady dying. You know I ain’t making nothing up. You know I ain’t trying be funny. Cause you seen it. You run from it just like I did. You know the shit’s still coming down and it’s falling on everybody in Homewood. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me don’t, cause we both running. I’m in here but it’s still falling on me. It’s falling on Daddy and Mommy and Dave and Gene and Tish and all the kids. Falls till it knocks you down.”
Finally, the author openly shares his inner conflict about his relationship with his brother who so often is out of mind (p. 222): Gradually, I’m teaching myself to decompartmentalize. This book is part of the unlearning of my first response to my brother’s imprisonment. In spite of good intentions, I constantly backslide. In large matters, like arranging for Omar to accompany me on a visit, or small neglecting to relay somebody’s greeting to my brother or a hello from Robby to some friend on the outside, I’ll revert to my old ways. My oversights embarrass me, shake me up, because I’m reminded that in crucial ways my brother still doesn’t exist for me in the intervals between visits. The walls become higher, thicker, unbreachable when I allow myself to be part of the conspiracy.”
April 17, 2021
How do we flourish in a world that seems owned by others, others who’ve been bent on our oppression if not our downright destruction? – Mitchell S. Jackson (p. IX)
Brothers and Keepers is the story of a man sent to prison for 44 years for a murder during a robbery. Although the robbery was intended, the murder was not – and the death appears to have been a complication of other factors. It is also the story of that man's brother, John Edgar Wideman, and how a family is impacted by a family member's crime and imprisonment – especially when the greater society already sees you as guilty just for the color of your skin: "prison isn’t just the time that you do, but the way that your family carries that time with them" (Reginald Dwayne Betts, pp. XIII-XIV).
In order to succeed in a world where the situation was already weighted against him, John Edgar Wideman had to deny and distance: "The problem was that in order to be the person I thought I wanted to be, I believed I had to seal myself off from you, construct a wall between us" (p. 30). At some points, Wideman seemed to believe that we can be good, successful, and White – or bad, unsuccessful, and Black. Wideman might have been able to avoid facing his biases if his brother had not been sent to prison, if Wideman had not worked to maintain a relationship with his brother.
I felt like I was reading something recently published when reading Brothers and Keepers. Unfortunately, Brothers and Keepers was published in 1984. Things have changed but not to the degree that we would like and perhaps not even in the direction that we would like. Incarcerations of Blacks continue to be disproportional relative to Whites and relative to that of people engaging in similar crimes.
Poor Blacks and Latinx in the US have several strikes against them relative to poor Whites: (a) disproportional policing in poor Black neighborhoods, (b) disproportionally-negative policing in those neighborhoods (ask George Floyd and Daunte Wright), and (c) a community that prevents success in societally-desirable ways (e.g., fewer opportunities for well-paying jobs, poorly-funded schools, problems in transportation and housing).
If Robby fell because the only stardom he could reasonably seek was stardom in crime, then that’s wrong. It’s wrong not because Robby wanted more but because society closed off every chance of getting more, except through crime. (p. 225)
It is easy to believe that Robby had choices – and certainly he had some – but I also wonder about those that were less available to him. What if we had invested in his schools and neighborhood to a greater degree? How much less expensive would it have been to develop a good jobs program in his school and neighborhood, for example, than putting him in jail for 44 years? How much more sense does it make to intervene before there iss a problem than afterwards?
The costs to society, to all of us, are even more poignant when reading Robby's graduation speech (he was the only one to graduate before the program was eliminated), when reading his Afterward, written after his release. What are our goals in imprisonment? Punishment? Rehabilitation? Keeping the rest of us safe? I'm not sure that these goals make sense, at least as they have been enacted.
The prison officials and the political constituency they claim to represent took their platform of “tough on crime” to new levels, ignoring truth and their moral compasses, deciding what prisoners needed was worse conditions, greater suffering, fewer programs, and more time. That will teach ’em. – Robert Wideman (pp. 280-281)
Brothers and Keepers is the story of a man sent to prison for 44 years for a murder during a robbery. Although the robbery was intended, the murder was not – and the death appears to have been a complication of other factors. It is also the story of that man's brother, John Edgar Wideman, and how a family is impacted by a family member's crime and imprisonment – especially when the greater society already sees you as guilty just for the color of your skin: "prison isn’t just the time that you do, but the way that your family carries that time with them" (Reginald Dwayne Betts, pp. XIII-XIV).
In order to succeed in a world where the situation was already weighted against him, John Edgar Wideman had to deny and distance: "The problem was that in order to be the person I thought I wanted to be, I believed I had to seal myself off from you, construct a wall between us" (p. 30). At some points, Wideman seemed to believe that we can be good, successful, and White – or bad, unsuccessful, and Black. Wideman might have been able to avoid facing his biases if his brother had not been sent to prison, if Wideman had not worked to maintain a relationship with his brother.
I felt like I was reading something recently published when reading Brothers and Keepers. Unfortunately, Brothers and Keepers was published in 1984. Things have changed but not to the degree that we would like and perhaps not even in the direction that we would like. Incarcerations of Blacks continue to be disproportional relative to Whites and relative to that of people engaging in similar crimes.
Poor Blacks and Latinx in the US have several strikes against them relative to poor Whites: (a) disproportional policing in poor Black neighborhoods, (b) disproportionally-negative policing in those neighborhoods (ask George Floyd and Daunte Wright), and (c) a community that prevents success in societally-desirable ways (e.g., fewer opportunities for well-paying jobs, poorly-funded schools, problems in transportation and housing).
If Robby fell because the only stardom he could reasonably seek was stardom in crime, then that’s wrong. It’s wrong not because Robby wanted more but because society closed off every chance of getting more, except through crime. (p. 225)
It is easy to believe that Robby had choices – and certainly he had some – but I also wonder about those that were less available to him. What if we had invested in his schools and neighborhood to a greater degree? How much less expensive would it have been to develop a good jobs program in his school and neighborhood, for example, than putting him in jail for 44 years? How much more sense does it make to intervene before there iss a problem than afterwards?
The costs to society, to all of us, are even more poignant when reading Robby's graduation speech (he was the only one to graduate before the program was eliminated), when reading his Afterward, written after his release. What are our goals in imprisonment? Punishment? Rehabilitation? Keeping the rest of us safe? I'm not sure that these goals make sense, at least as they have been enacted.
The prison officials and the political constituency they claim to represent took their platform of “tough on crime” to new levels, ignoring truth and their moral compasses, deciding what prisoners needed was worse conditions, greater suffering, fewer programs, and more time. That will teach ’em. – Robert Wideman (pp. 280-281)
October 9, 2011
Why did I not discover John Edgar Wideman sooner? Wow: "Brothers and Keepers" is haunting, searing, and one of the most wonderful memoirs I've ever read. In "Brothers," Wideman revisits the incarceration of his younger brother, the pain, the misunderstanding, and, at its root, a lingering discrimination in this country.
What is most moving--to this reader--is Wideman's brutal honesty, including his own discomfort with his brother, with visiting him in prison, and with--at its heart--finding a way to forgive him. It is this honesty that makes this memoir transcendent, human--rather than simply a recounting of an author's conflict.
What is most moving--to this reader--is Wideman's brutal honesty, including his own discomfort with his brother, with visiting him in prison, and with--at its heart--finding a way to forgive him. It is this honesty that makes this memoir transcendent, human--rather than simply a recounting of an author's conflict.
December 25, 2008
Although I have a special place in my heart for this author (he's from Pittsburgh), Brothers and Keepers is a beautifully written memoir nonetheless. Mr. Wideman offers a thoughtful account of his family and his relationship with his brother Robby...a story of two brothers who come from the same family, same background, but take two very different paths. I can put this one down and read it again two years later...it never gets old!
July 7, 2010
Ahh, I'm torn about this book. It might be four stars.
I liked the way the voices of the two brothers went in and out, and I liked the way Wideman used the structure to question his own decisions and perspective as a writer, interviewer, storyteller, brother, husband, prison visitor. In general, I found the dialogue between the two voices to be thoughtful and illuminating. And, unlike Philadelphia Fire, I felt like I mostly understood what was going on. Which is certainly a plus.
On the other hand, some of Wideman's observations and reflections on the prison system itself felt weighted down by his own writing style. It didn't seem like there was enough depth to his critique of the prison system to merit the extent of the florid metaphors that it was wrapped in. The unfortunate effect of this, in my mind, was that passages that should have felt compelling and true, instead felt more like a slog through the obvious.
I liked the way the voices of the two brothers went in and out, and I liked the way Wideman used the structure to question his own decisions and perspective as a writer, interviewer, storyteller, brother, husband, prison visitor. In general, I found the dialogue between the two voices to be thoughtful and illuminating. And, unlike Philadelphia Fire, I felt like I mostly understood what was going on. Which is certainly a plus.
On the other hand, some of Wideman's observations and reflections on the prison system itself felt weighted down by his own writing style. It didn't seem like there was enough depth to his critique of the prison system to merit the extent of the florid metaphors that it was wrapped in. The unfortunate effect of this, in my mind, was that passages that should have felt compelling and true, instead felt more like a slog through the obvious.
December 9, 2012
This was a really good book. I liked it alot. Very different than anything I have ever read. The authors brother is serving a life sentence in prison for his part in a botched robbery of people who they were fencing hot TV's too. Although the brother was not the trigger man he still recieved a life sentence. The author who is ten years older and was not close to his younger brother writes the book with his brother to determine how their paths differed and where the decisions were made to go different ways. Also the book may cause a person to reconsider the current prison system and the "get tough on prisoner" mindset.
A bit depressing in reading in as I read the book. The prisoner hopes for a release/parole at some point in the future. The book was written in 1984 and he is currrently still imprisoned today.
A bit depressing in reading in as I read the book. The prisoner hopes for a release/parole at some point in the future. The book was written in 1984 and he is currrently still imprisoned today.
August 2, 2013
Wideman's writing is so descriptive and so vivid, I felt transported back to 1975. He painted the painful situation of his brother's time in jail so intensely, I had to do some further research on whether Robby got out. Unfortunately, he is still incarcerated and has been partitioning for a pardon for many years. I really enjoyed this memoir. Tragedy did not end with Robby being in prison, John Wideman's middle son is also serving life sentence for a 1985 murder. I would like to read some of Wideman's later books. His style is provocative and thought-provoking.
July 9, 2012
I read this book for an assignment for my English class. The book probed my interest at first, but was unable to fully capture it and I set the book down to be read later. When I picked it up again, I found myself connecting with John and began to develop a sense of what it was like to pass through those walls every visit. I appreciated Robby's part of the story because I could sympathize with him and his perspective created conflicting emotions between what John felt about him and what I, the reader, felt about him. I was trying to fit myself in John's shoes and Robby's shoes at the same time. "This book will work if the reader participates, begins to grasp what I have. I hadn't been listening closely enough, so I missed the story announcing itself. When I caught on, there I was, my listening, waiting self part of the story, listening, waiting for me."
November 13, 2007
One of my favorites all-time, to read and to teach.
January 6, 2025
Brutal to read but absolutely necessary if we’re going to change incarceration, in addition to helping all communities uphold human values and create an equal playing field for anyone who aspires to do something with their lives. We are all born with an innate sense of self. Nurturing that self-exploration via education or vocational routes belongs to everyone. Imagine if Robbie (in the book) had been encouraged to explore his love of music and poetry? His path would have been so different. This book will stay with me for years. The writing is exemplary and the story demands to be read. I’m grateful this one was recommended.
January 28, 2025
A difficult tale to digest especially given the fact that the book although written 40 years ago has not changed much. The US is still dealing with mass incarcerations of primarily black and brown skinned men. The conditions have not improved much if any over the past 40 years and we still do not have solid programs and education in place to provide for success post incarceration.
October 7, 2023
The podcast that led me to read this book is 5 Michelin stars, 5 diamonds:
WBUR - Violation - Episode 1 = “Two Sons, Lost”
===========
Quotes:
Tell Leslie the truth. Right away. Don’t let it slide a day longer. Things only get more complicated the longer you wait. Nothing gets better. Time passes and you can get busy with something, you can distract yourself, and
pretend things will sort
themselves out, but that’s bull . .
All you insure by putting off the moment when you tell the truth, the whole truth, is that things will get worse. The hurt you inflict deepens. Your inner turmoil grows more disruptive, bitter.
Waiting, opens the possibility of losing control, of allowing what you won’t disclose to come to light in another fashion. And that’s fatal. You lose once and for all the small consolation that a voluntary confession might have brought. You’re a thief caught in
the act, and nothing you say can change that.
I let Robby know I’m speaking from experience and that’s why I’m preaching at him. I’m telling him to act in a way I didn’t. I didn’t confess. I got caught cheating. So I’m a witness. I can authenticate the terrible cost of
holding back the truth by
describing the chaos of my life…
WBUR - Violation - Episode 1 = “Two Sons, Lost”
===========
Quotes:
Tell Leslie the truth. Right away. Don’t let it slide a day longer. Things only get more complicated the longer you wait. Nothing gets better. Time passes and you can get busy with something, you can distract yourself, and
pretend things will sort
themselves out, but that’s bull . .
All you insure by putting off the moment when you tell the truth, the whole truth, is that things will get worse. The hurt you inflict deepens. Your inner turmoil grows more disruptive, bitter.
Waiting, opens the possibility of losing control, of allowing what you won’t disclose to come to light in another fashion. And that’s fatal. You lose once and for all the small consolation that a voluntary confession might have brought. You’re a thief caught in
the act, and nothing you say can change that.
I let Robby know I’m speaking from experience and that’s why I’m preaching at him. I’m telling him to act in a way I didn’t. I didn’t confess. I got caught cheating. So I’m a witness. I can authenticate the terrible cost of
holding back the truth by
describing the chaos of my life…
February 28, 2008
wideman's language is so easy on a reader, but the words carry so much with them. he tells you about his brother and who they are to one another and how they got that way. but he's a professor and a black man married to a white woman and a father living in the northwest while his brother is in prison for a killing back on the east coast so it's not just some professorial memoir. wideman explores what it means to be who he is, what he represents to others and how he and his brother came from the same place.
December 21, 2011
I love this book and recommend it endlessly.
December 6, 2016
A gut wrenching, beautifully crafted memoir.
August 29, 2021
Finishing this book I just sat there stunned. I can't remember the last time that happened to me. Why did I waste my stars on all those other books, and now I can't give this one more than 5!
Admittedly, I have a reason this book would resonate, having my brother been in prison. While his circumstances are about 100 times better (three years compared to 44), there was a lot to relate to. The author has described in unflinching honesty the horrors the judicial system inflicted on one brother and the guilt of successfully fleeing the ghetto in the other. The fear involved with seeing first-hand the difference between being on the inside and being on the outside and how it plays out in the visitation room. The capricious and arbitrary rule-making of prison life. The utter helplessness in not being able to do anything about it, on the individual scale or the macro. I've said so many times, "If this is what they can do to my white, middle-age, middle-class, highly-educated brother, what would they do to a poor black kid from the hood?"
I was intensely affected by the prison-bound brother's story of his crime told in his own words. As my brother's defense attorney said, "Everyone in prison is there because of five seconds of stupidity."
Admittedly, I have a reason this book would resonate, having my brother been in prison. While his circumstances are about 100 times better (three years compared to 44), there was a lot to relate to. The author has described in unflinching honesty the horrors the judicial system inflicted on one brother and the guilt of successfully fleeing the ghetto in the other. The fear involved with seeing first-hand the difference between being on the inside and being on the outside and how it plays out in the visitation room. The capricious and arbitrary rule-making of prison life. The utter helplessness in not being able to do anything about it, on the individual scale or the macro. I've said so many times, "If this is what they can do to my white, middle-age, middle-class, highly-educated brother, what would they do to a poor black kid from the hood?"
I was intensely affected by the prison-bound brother's story of his crime told in his own words. As my brother's defense attorney said, "Everyone in prison is there because of five seconds of stupidity."
August 15, 2022
Very powerful book - two African American brothers telling their stories to each other, one a college professor, one who ended up in prison, finally (after many years of not doing so) talking to each other with honesty and openness. I do recommend that if a person reads this book, they get the newest version which contains prefaces giving new information about what happened further on in their lives.
January 9, 2025
« Je m'efforce de garder le moral, mais, à l'heure où je t'écris, c'est dur de trouver une raison de rester debout, puisqu'ils semblent avoir supprimé toutes celles pour lesquelles ça valait la peine d'essayer. »
October 30, 2020
A powerful and moving memoir.
December 26, 2020
Stunning memoir of two brothers and the dramatically different paths of their lives.
Did Not Finish
May 21, 2026DNF. Not my cup of tea. I don't generally like memoirs, but I try things. I was hoping for something more upstream, discussing what could be learned from this high-contrast pair of brothers about how to help more children flourish. Instead, there's a lot very far downstream about what's happening with the unsuccessful brother after incarceration for murder.
October 29, 2025
Genuinely excellent, once of the only books i’ve ever been assigned a passage from that I actually went out and finished because I liked it so much.
June 9, 2014
May 20, 2004
Karon Luddy
“The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame”
Eudora Welty
This is a memoir of two brothers, one behind real bars and the other behind unreal bars. It’s both a ballet and an opera—or perhaps a long blues song with intermittent tap dancing. It’s a theatrical shuck and jive show between keepers and those they keep.
As in most memoirs, the author had to find a place from which to tell this particular story. Where do you start? Instead of the chronological view, Wideman decides to view the story from the associate context of his experience, which works beautifully, allowing him to go backward and forward picking up pieces of the puzzle that fit the wiser, broader picture he’s trying to create. The story unpacks itself throughout the narrative through the use of human memory.
As Eudora Welty says, “Memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. It’s definitely not a chronological thing . . . Writing a story is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon the cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.”
The title is descriptive and provocative. Perhaps a great subtitle might be: Doing Time in America. Essentially, that seems to be one of the abiding themes in this narrative: how we spend our time, whether together or alone, caged or uncaged. The narrative is told in three major sections and then a postscript. The first section is Visits: Told from the author’s POV, mainly exposition and narrative about the who, what, where and when of the forthcoming story. The next two sections: Our Time and Doing Time include intermingled sections by the author and his brother. Including poems, letters, and first person POV narrative from the author and first person narrative in Robby’s POV, as told by the author. Postscript: This includes three brief sections. Update by author on Robby, the text of Robby’s graduation speech, a letter from Robby to author.
Thematically, Brothers and Keepers is a story about all the different kinds of freedom, artistic, spiritual, economic, social, political, etc. Ultimately, it’s a story of brotherly love and understanding. It’s a story about how, in order to survive, you need to be strong—and lucky.
Karon Luddy
“The frame through which I viewed the world changed too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame”
Eudora Welty
This is a memoir of two brothers, one behind real bars and the other behind unreal bars. It’s both a ballet and an opera—or perhaps a long blues song with intermittent tap dancing. It’s a theatrical shuck and jive show between keepers and those they keep.
As in most memoirs, the author had to find a place from which to tell this particular story. Where do you start? Instead of the chronological view, Wideman decides to view the story from the associate context of his experience, which works beautifully, allowing him to go backward and forward picking up pieces of the puzzle that fit the wiser, broader picture he’s trying to create. The story unpacks itself throughout the narrative through the use of human memory.
As Eudora Welty says, “Memory is a living thing—it too is in transit. It’s definitely not a chronological thing . . . Writing a story is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon the cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.”
The title is descriptive and provocative. Perhaps a great subtitle might be: Doing Time in America. Essentially, that seems to be one of the abiding themes in this narrative: how we spend our time, whether together or alone, caged or uncaged. The narrative is told in three major sections and then a postscript. The first section is Visits: Told from the author’s POV, mainly exposition and narrative about the who, what, where and when of the forthcoming story. The next two sections: Our Time and Doing Time include intermingled sections by the author and his brother. Including poems, letters, and first person POV narrative from the author and first person narrative in Robby’s POV, as told by the author. Postscript: This includes three brief sections. Update by author on Robby, the text of Robby’s graduation speech, a letter from Robby to author.
Thematically, Brothers and Keepers is a story about all the different kinds of freedom, artistic, spiritual, economic, social, political, etc. Ultimately, it’s a story of brotherly love and understanding. It’s a story about how, in order to survive, you need to be strong—and lucky.
December 26, 2016
Very sad account of two black brothers- John, a university professor and writer (the author) and Robby, serving time for participating in a crime where a man was killed (he was not the trigger man.) Issues of race are explored and the disadvantages that make it harder for minorities to find success.
"A healthy, handsome son, a good loving wife, the sort of family unit and simple, everyday life Robby dreams of now, were once within his grasp. But it all came too soon. He wasn't ready. He blew it. Not alone, of course. Society cooperated. Robby's chance for a normal life was as illusory as most citizens' chances to be elected to office or run a corporation. If "normal" implies a decent job, delayed gratification, then for Robby and 75 percent of young black males growing up in the 1960s, "normal" was the exception rather than the rule. Robby was smart enough to see there was no light at the end of the long tunnel of hard work (if and when you could get it) and respectability. He was stubborn, aggressive, and prickly enough not to allow anyone to bully him into the tunnel. He chose the bright lights winking right in front of his face, just beyond his fingertips. For him and most of his buddies, "normal" was poverty, drugs, street crime, Vietnam, or prison."
This book was written in 1984 and today the prison population has increased by about 500%- the majority of inmates are black men. Such a sad commentary and waste of life. I tried to find out if Robby was ever paroled- after 35 years there was a petition for his release but I don't think it was successful. It was later determined that the shooting victim may have died because he was neglected in the emergency room for hours before being treated for his wound.
"A healthy, handsome son, a good loving wife, the sort of family unit and simple, everyday life Robby dreams of now, were once within his grasp. But it all came too soon. He wasn't ready. He blew it. Not alone, of course. Society cooperated. Robby's chance for a normal life was as illusory as most citizens' chances to be elected to office or run a corporation. If "normal" implies a decent job, delayed gratification, then for Robby and 75 percent of young black males growing up in the 1960s, "normal" was the exception rather than the rule. Robby was smart enough to see there was no light at the end of the long tunnel of hard work (if and when you could get it) and respectability. He was stubborn, aggressive, and prickly enough not to allow anyone to bully him into the tunnel. He chose the bright lights winking right in front of his face, just beyond his fingertips. For him and most of his buddies, "normal" was poverty, drugs, street crime, Vietnam, or prison."
This book was written in 1984 and today the prison population has increased by about 500%- the majority of inmates are black men. Such a sad commentary and waste of life. I tried to find out if Robby was ever paroled- after 35 years there was a petition for his release but I don't think it was successful. It was later determined that the shooting victim may have died because he was neglected in the emergency room for hours before being treated for his wound.
February 3, 2008
Wideman told the story of his brother Robby who has spent years in prison for murder. Of course John was an intricate part of the book, being that he was the author. At the on set, John said "I felt much more confident borrowing narrative techniques learned from fiction than employing a tape recorder" (ix). That is while talking with his brother.John and Robby exchanged discourses while the former visited his brother in prison. One such technique would be John writing as Robby, from the first-person. John claimed to have jotted down his brother's words. Even if Robby's words are Robby's words, why didn't John write the book in the third person? This technique allowed the reader to have an intimate relationship with Robby, although some aspects of Robby may have been fictionalized. The word "Nigger" provided all readers with a kind of intimacy that (quite possibly) only African ¬Americans are able to be a part of. One could argue if the word is appropriate in today's street lingo or everyday conversations; but one cannot argue that it should have been excluded from the book. The Widemans incorporated "nigger" into their speech, back then. If John was expected to be honest, then the word was mandatory.
October 7, 2010
Reading this for our Let's Talk About It group. Looks a bit grim, but it is a memoir, not fiction like the other books in the series. Update - I am really glad i read this. It isn't a book i would have picked up to read and it certainly gives you a look at a slice of life that I am not at all familiar with. It is the story of brothers -- one well educated, successful and a man who "got out" and the other, the youngest, had a complex about living up to the success of his older brother and other siblings. The youngest was the one who was smooth talker and was always looking to scoring his second million when he didn't have his first thousand dollars taken care of first. The younger brother commits a crime, someone dies and both brothers have quite a journey of discovery to come to terms with many things. It is also a story of a black family in Pittsburgh and the very different choices these two brothers make during their lives there. It is both uplifting and sad at the same time. And lord, lots of bad karma floating around that comes back to haunt all of these people eventually when you find out what happen to them after the memoir ends.
February 22, 2009
This probing exploration of how the same family situation could produce both a noted scholar/author and a prisoner involved in a robbery-turned-murder presents much of its material from the viewpoint of Robby, the brother in prison. The book provides psychological insight as well as an indictment not only of the prison system but of the social conditions of poverty and racism which feed that system. For Robby crime was to some extent his way of living life on his own terms, the terms of the street, succeeding in the place to which society had consigned him. He saw joining society, and following its dictates, as a form of capitulating to it, and since society, by placing him in the ghetto, had treated him contemptuously and unjustly, his defiance of society was a way of asserting his manhood.
September 19, 2011
The story of two brothers one of whom was part of a robbery that killed a man and is serving a life sentence. The good brother is a professor and loves taking purple flights of over intellectualizing everything. The first part of the novel crawls along as the good brother (the author) sets how anguished and conflicted and blah blah blah he is. The middle moves along because the bad brother tells the story who thankfully uses a lot less adjectives and a lot more verbs. This part of the story cooks along but then gets bogged down again when the story comes to the present. Getting to the present the good brother takes back over and has nothing to contribute to the story but more pointless verbiage. The bad brothers story is interesting as is the way he tells it, but the good brother does his best to bury it without contributing much of interest himself.
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