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HIDING PLACE
A man lay dead in a parking lot. Tommy didn't kill him, but the police will shoot first and ask questions later. Mother Bess is kin, but she is a crazy, mean old lady hiding out high about the Homewood streets--streets that have taken away everything she ever loved. Together, Tommy and Mother Bess are hiding, in anger and fear. Will they find the courage to come out of hiding?
- GenresFiction
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 1981
1 person is currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
94 books405 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 5, 2020
It feels lame to compare Wideman to James Baldwin as it seems too obvious to be true — two of the premier black writers of the late 20th century can only be compared to each other? But at times Hiding Place felt similar to Baldwin with its semi-autobiographical elements (Tommy on the run is reminiscent of Wideman’s actual brother, and tommy even has a brother in this novel who comes in from Wyoming named...John), it’s lived-in black experience and it’s considerations of time and family — structurally, It gestures toward Go Tell it on the Mountain.
What’s unique about Wideman’s writing is the freedom he gives to his characters voices. There is not narration and dialogue, or remembered scenes with repeated speech. The narration and dialogue blend. The characters tell the story as they’re told it, and as people do they break off on asides about their pasts, others pasts, the neighborhood, their families, etc. Everyone speaks in their natural way including Wideman. You uncover the ways they’re all connected and find that this is a novel about family, even for the unrelated characters like Clement.
Tommy, Bess, Carl, and the rest are an actual family. But, Homewood is a family too. All with their own histories, relationships, responsibilities to each other and as a whole — as seen in the brief exploration of Miss Claudine and Big Bob’s relationship. Nothing happens without everyone knowing, speculating, and importantly talking about it.
The Homewood community is a beautiful living thing, full of life, stories, potential, personality. Homewood itself is a killing thing, swallowing them all whole. Tommy feels trapped. Bess feels stuck, hopeless. They’ve all stagnated and accepted they can go nowhere else. Tommy, even in his attempt to run from a murder charge, can only think to run to Bess’s backyard. "Tommy Lawson’s the one. Still loose. But he ain’t a thousand miles away. Just up on Bruston Hill in her house."
There is a cinematic quality to Wideman’s writing here as well. Tommy’s memory of his grandfather’s funeral and his subsequent fight with Sarah felt like a scene playing in my head. I could see this being a miniseries on HBO with all of the family drama, but I hope no one ever digs deep enough to find it and make it. I’d prefer those scenes to live in my head and the head’s of readers.
This is a novel about about generations of family (families?) trapped in the same cycles, wishing to help the present and future generations, but feeling unable to do so. It’s a trap that was set, sprung, and stuck, and poisons the living and the dead alike. It’s a portrait of the black experience in America I can’t can’t relate to but can empathize with. And it’s an investigation of family and their responsibility that we all must confront in our own way.
I’ll leave with this passage.
"He wants to say something back to her, but the spoon is too close to his mouth, and his hand is shaking so he leans down to swallow instead. Everything is in the taste of soup. The flailing light hovering in the bottom of the rear window and leaking under the splayed black door, the purple silhouette on the hills in the horizon, the smoke smell inside the shack, the hiss of wood inside the stove’s belly, the old woman’s voice talking to the vegetables she had peeled and sliced and dropped into bubbling, seasoned stock.
All in the first taste of soup and he wants to tell her that, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know how he can tell her about all that, about the simple coming together of things unless he can tell her how things fall apart, but the falling apart is the story of his trouble and she doesn’t want to hear his trouble so he savors the taste and everything in it a few moments longer and says:
This sure is good soup, and says, Thank you Mother Bess."
What’s unique about Wideman’s writing is the freedom he gives to his characters voices. There is not narration and dialogue, or remembered scenes with repeated speech. The narration and dialogue blend. The characters tell the story as they’re told it, and as people do they break off on asides about their pasts, others pasts, the neighborhood, their families, etc. Everyone speaks in their natural way including Wideman. You uncover the ways they’re all connected and find that this is a novel about family, even for the unrelated characters like Clement.
Tommy, Bess, Carl, and the rest are an actual family. But, Homewood is a family too. All with their own histories, relationships, responsibilities to each other and as a whole — as seen in the brief exploration of Miss Claudine and Big Bob’s relationship. Nothing happens without everyone knowing, speculating, and importantly talking about it.
The Homewood community is a beautiful living thing, full of life, stories, potential, personality. Homewood itself is a killing thing, swallowing them all whole. Tommy feels trapped. Bess feels stuck, hopeless. They’ve all stagnated and accepted they can go nowhere else. Tommy, even in his attempt to run from a murder charge, can only think to run to Bess’s backyard. "Tommy Lawson’s the one. Still loose. But he ain’t a thousand miles away. Just up on Bruston Hill in her house."
There is a cinematic quality to Wideman’s writing here as well. Tommy’s memory of his grandfather’s funeral and his subsequent fight with Sarah felt like a scene playing in my head. I could see this being a miniseries on HBO with all of the family drama, but I hope no one ever digs deep enough to find it and make it. I’d prefer those scenes to live in my head and the head’s of readers.
This is a novel about about generations of family (families?) trapped in the same cycles, wishing to help the present and future generations, but feeling unable to do so. It’s a trap that was set, sprung, and stuck, and poisons the living and the dead alike. It’s a portrait of the black experience in America I can’t can’t relate to but can empathize with. And it’s an investigation of family and their responsibility that we all must confront in our own way.
I’ll leave with this passage.
"He wants to say something back to her, but the spoon is too close to his mouth, and his hand is shaking so he leans down to swallow instead. Everything is in the taste of soup. The flailing light hovering in the bottom of the rear window and leaking under the splayed black door, the purple silhouette on the hills in the horizon, the smoke smell inside the shack, the hiss of wood inside the stove’s belly, the old woman’s voice talking to the vegetables she had peeled and sliced and dropped into bubbling, seasoned stock.
All in the first taste of soup and he wants to tell her that, but he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know how he can tell her about all that, about the simple coming together of things unless he can tell her how things fall apart, but the falling apart is the story of his trouble and she doesn’t want to hear his trouble so he savors the taste and everything in it a few moments longer and says:
This sure is good soup, and says, Thank you Mother Bess."
May 1, 2021
POV carried in alternating voices/chapters by a young man in the streets, an old woman on the hill, and a boy who travels between streets and hill. Old woman is hiding on the hill, from time. Young man briefly tries to hide on the hill, from the streets. She represents a past (say 1900-1950) that refuses to move forward, he represents a present (late 1960s?) that is running in place; both of them are dying. The boy bouncing between them like some crazy, uncomprehending chorus, like "just living."
It's like a family saga (and includes a helpful family tree). Turns out the old woman, Bess, is the great-grand-aunt of the young man, Tommy. You get the sense that their whole extended family is a connected, concerned, rich and loving thing, but a thing that exists elsewhere. For Bess and Tommy, for different reasons, all those links have been broken. And there's no good reason Bess and Tommy should be together now. They're only together for maybe two nights? three? But it feels like lifetimes. Pretty amazing book.
It's like a family saga (and includes a helpful family tree). Turns out the old woman, Bess, is the great-grand-aunt of the young man, Tommy. You get the sense that their whole extended family is a connected, concerned, rich and loving thing, but a thing that exists elsewhere. For Bess and Tommy, for different reasons, all those links have been broken. And there's no good reason Bess and Tommy should be together now. They're only together for maybe two nights? three? But it feels like lifetimes. Pretty amazing book.
March 6, 2022
A tale of an ancient woman and her much younger nephew facing down generations of bitter ghosts and dashed expectations in 1970’s Pittsburgh. Building off a single episode in his previous book, Damballah, Wideman probes a family’s painful past seeking clues for their contemporary troubles. Less grand and ambitious than the first book, but equally adept in conjuring flesh and blood characters through small details and the interactions of voices.
January 18, 2012
How can I put this in a way you'll understand? John Edgar Wideman can write!
Wideman is the male Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is the female Wideman. I don't know which came first, and I doubt either one of them can claim preeminence along any chronological lines, but both write in the same distinctively breathtaking way.
Wideman's prose is a multiple sensory experience. And not even limited to five. You see, feel, taste, remember, and aofowahire;oita (word that doesn't exist in written language) the story, characters, time period(s), social movements, rotation of the Earth, etc. It's the kind of awe-inspiring reading that makes reviewers say inane things, like the quote on the book's cover ("Wideman moves into the very heart of the black experience in urban America").
Hiding Place picks up the story of one of Damballah's most intriguing characters, Tommy. As Tommy hides from the police, he shacks up (literally) with Bess, who is hiding from just about everything but the police. Wideman then proceeds to reteach what the word "hide" means.
Having set up his foundation in the first of the loose Homewood trilogy, Wideman is able to play across both the streets of Pittsburgh and its generations. Can't wait to read the third installment!
Wideman is the male Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison is the female Wideman. I don't know which came first, and I doubt either one of them can claim preeminence along any chronological lines, but both write in the same distinctively breathtaking way.
Wideman's prose is a multiple sensory experience. And not even limited to five. You see, feel, taste, remember, and aofowahire;oita (word that doesn't exist in written language) the story, characters, time period(s), social movements, rotation of the Earth, etc. It's the kind of awe-inspiring reading that makes reviewers say inane things, like the quote on the book's cover ("Wideman moves into the very heart of the black experience in urban America").
Hiding Place picks up the story of one of Damballah's most intriguing characters, Tommy. As Tommy hides from the police, he shacks up (literally) with Bess, who is hiding from just about everything but the police. Wideman then proceeds to reteach what the word "hide" means.
Having set up his foundation in the first of the loose Homewood trilogy, Wideman is able to play across both the streets of Pittsburgh and its generations. Can't wait to read the third installment!
May 3, 2007
Stream-of-consciousness story about a family in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. I loved the rhythm of the language. I want to read it again now that I get that rhythm.
May 9, 2012
I probably would've given it 5 if I hadn't been forced into reading it in one sitting, but I will definitely be reading more from Wideman!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews