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American Histories
In a new short story collection, John Edgar Wideman—the acclaimed author of Writing to Save a Life—explores subjects from the historical to the imagined, with a cast of fictional and real-life characters as diverse as Frederick Douglass, Jean Michael Basquiat, and his own family.
John Edgar Wideman, lauded throughout his career, is a master at many forms. His latest offering, a collection of complex, charged stories, is a stunning marriage of the personal and historical.
“JB & FD” re-imagines conversations between John Brown, the White antislavery crusader who famously raided Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and Frederick Douglass, the Black abolitionist and orator. “Maps and Ledgers” examines a painful incident in the author’s childhood and his relationship with his father. “Williamsburg Bridge” follows a man contemplating suicide. “My Dead” considers Wideman’s departed brother and uncle. These stories are spellbinding narrative reflections on abolitionists and artists, fathers and sons, the bonds of family and the pull of memory.
Wideman’s fiction challenges the boundaries of the form. His stories operate on many levels, weaving together historical fact, imagined conversation, philosophical kernels, and deeply personal vignettes. As a whole, American Histories amounts to more than the sum of its parts, an extended meditation on family, history, and loss. This is Wideman at his best, most emotionally precise, and most intellectually stimulating.
John Edgar Wideman, lauded throughout his career, is a master at many forms. His latest offering, a collection of complex, charged stories, is a stunning marriage of the personal and historical.
“JB & FD” re-imagines conversations between John Brown, the White antislavery crusader who famously raided Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and Frederick Douglass, the Black abolitionist and orator. “Maps and Ledgers” examines a painful incident in the author’s childhood and his relationship with his father. “Williamsburg Bridge” follows a man contemplating suicide. “My Dead” considers Wideman’s departed brother and uncle. These stories are spellbinding narrative reflections on abolitionists and artists, fathers and sons, the bonds of family and the pull of memory.
Wideman’s fiction challenges the boundaries of the form. His stories operate on many levels, weaving together historical fact, imagined conversation, philosophical kernels, and deeply personal vignettes. As a whole, American Histories amounts to more than the sum of its parts, an extended meditation on family, history, and loss. This is Wideman at his best, most emotionally precise, and most intellectually stimulating.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 20, 2018
34 people are currently reading
1612 people want to read
About the author
John Edgar Wideman
95 books408 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 34 reviews
April 10, 2018
Wideman writes a short story collection featuring the real and the imagined, of family, loss and history that is deeply compelling. The stories range from a mere wisp to the more substantial, often reading like a treatise on race in the US. It begins with a prefatory note to the President, imploring him to eradicate slavery, not just words found in the constitution, but the actual realities of black Americans facing this scenario today. However, it is acknowledged that it just may not be in his power to address this. What follows are a diverse range of scenarios featuring Wideman's family and characters such as John Brown, Frederick Douglass and Basquiat.
Frederick Douglass sees a different path for himself in tackling slavery from the more direct action route taken by John Brown, willing to lay down his life and places his family directly amidst the fight against slavery. There are dinner conversations on Putin, health, failure of the public schools to educate coloured boys and white cops killing unarmed black boys in Dark Matter. There is what shape the world is in, how it shapes the beginning and end of lives. The dead claimed by the war, a woman intent on keeping her baby from being born on Friday 13 June so as not to doom it further than it already will be. In Maps and Ledgers, Wideman's father kills a man, his Auntie C gets him a lawyer and his plea of self defense in successful. However, this is merely a prelude to a family avalanche of the worst to come, mapped by the author in ledgers. A botched surgery has the hospital held unaccountable. Wideman wonders how to help a writing student in her tale of race and slavery to push her out of the stereotype of powerless black women, instead hoping perhaps for her to break bad and have the racist system remorselessly challenged. There are thoughts on suicide, jazz and Williamsburg Bridge, mobs with their hands red from days of wasting black children, women and men in draft riots. Wideman celebrates those scholars who uncovered and preserved evidence of those who resisted slavery and bondage, such as Nat Turner, dying like so many, for the sin of his colour.
Wideman gives us multiple aspects, experiences and thoughts on race that define his uncompromising stance on slavery and the black experience of life in American history and its present. He is radical in his perspective, with a wealth of evidence to back up his stance. Many may well find his thinking unsettling, disturbing and uncomfortable. I see him as philosophical, profound, moving, energising, amidst a history of an unforgiving, ruthless, divide and conquer, and exploitative world experienced by black Americans. The present state of the US offers little in the way of a promising future. A hard hitting and thought provoking selection of short stories from Wideman which I recommend highly. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
Frederick Douglass sees a different path for himself in tackling slavery from the more direct action route taken by John Brown, willing to lay down his life and places his family directly amidst the fight against slavery. There are dinner conversations on Putin, health, failure of the public schools to educate coloured boys and white cops killing unarmed black boys in Dark Matter. There is what shape the world is in, how it shapes the beginning and end of lives. The dead claimed by the war, a woman intent on keeping her baby from being born on Friday 13 June so as not to doom it further than it already will be. In Maps and Ledgers, Wideman's father kills a man, his Auntie C gets him a lawyer and his plea of self defense in successful. However, this is merely a prelude to a family avalanche of the worst to come, mapped by the author in ledgers. A botched surgery has the hospital held unaccountable. Wideman wonders how to help a writing student in her tale of race and slavery to push her out of the stereotype of powerless black women, instead hoping perhaps for her to break bad and have the racist system remorselessly challenged. There are thoughts on suicide, jazz and Williamsburg Bridge, mobs with their hands red from days of wasting black children, women and men in draft riots. Wideman celebrates those scholars who uncovered and preserved evidence of those who resisted slavery and bondage, such as Nat Turner, dying like so many, for the sin of his colour.
Wideman gives us multiple aspects, experiences and thoughts on race that define his uncompromising stance on slavery and the black experience of life in American history and its present. He is radical in his perspective, with a wealth of evidence to back up his stance. Many may well find his thinking unsettling, disturbing and uncomfortable. I see him as philosophical, profound, moving, energising, amidst a history of an unforgiving, ruthless, divide and conquer, and exploitative world experienced by black Americans. The present state of the US offers little in the way of a promising future. A hard hitting and thought provoking selection of short stories from Wideman which I recommend highly. Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC.
May 3, 2018
John Edgar Wideman has been writing for decades, his work often mention as being in the vein of other famous black writers before him: Ellison, Wright, Himes, etc. I own several of his other works but this is the first I've picked up and I'm a little on the fence about it.
While his writing is certainly strong, and makes me interested in reading more of his work, his style at times is almost opaquely dense. He goes off on these long, meandering tangents, which are lyrical and beautiful but ultimately a bit vague.
The form here is also confusing: is it meta-fiction, essay, or poetry? I can't tell what these "stories" want to be, and that makes me feel slightly misled by the label of "stories." Truthfully these are autobiographical essays or memoirs, with two or three actual stories mixed in.
Wideman doesn't use anything close to a light touch here, and I feel like this collection would've benefitted from a few sprinkles of optimism somewhere, but there was truly none to be found.
While his writing is certainly strong, and makes me interested in reading more of his work, his style at times is almost opaquely dense. He goes off on these long, meandering tangents, which are lyrical and beautiful but ultimately a bit vague.
The form here is also confusing: is it meta-fiction, essay, or poetry? I can't tell what these "stories" want to be, and that makes me feel slightly misled by the label of "stories." Truthfully these are autobiographical essays or memoirs, with two or three actual stories mixed in.
Wideman doesn't use anything close to a light touch here, and I feel like this collection would've benefitted from a few sprinkles of optimism somewhere, but there was truly none to be found.
August 5, 2020
I didn’t enjoy any of these stories, but I only made it through the first nine. The steam of consciousness writing style was challenging, to say the least.
December 7, 2017
This is an amazingly strong collection of stories examining the African American experience from multiple points of view. Employing a wide range of voices, these stories vary in length, but most share a quality of extraordinary depth not usually as consistent in other collections. There is not a lightweight in the bunch, which in some cases caused me to set the book down for a while since as a whole, it is a lot to digest at one go. As with most fine collections, a meaty selection such as this requires more work than a novel of the same length, and this one, with its lessons, observations and quality, is harder work than most, and more rewarding.
March 21, 2018
There is Toni Morrison, there was Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou and William Faulkner, then there is now this writer you can read John Edgar Wideman, with this short narrative form done so well.
Great accumulative sentences and prose style within, many voices in the various narratives, ones of loss, in fear, in joy, terror, in slavery, in the shoes of Nat Turner, and in life expounding a myriad of complexities and tragic histories past and present, and ongoing, with mans failings and evils, joys and pains, sound and fury. The sentences are a joy to read without the need for a journeys end.
An outstanding haunting meditation of literary work of the past and present, global and personal, that may be read over many times and to hit best books lists of this year.
Excerpts and review @ https://more2read.com/review/american-histories-by-john-edgar-wideman/
Great accumulative sentences and prose style within, many voices in the various narratives, ones of loss, in fear, in joy, terror, in slavery, in the shoes of Nat Turner, and in life expounding a myriad of complexities and tragic histories past and present, and ongoing, with mans failings and evils, joys and pains, sound and fury. The sentences are a joy to read without the need for a journeys end.
An outstanding haunting meditation of literary work of the past and present, global and personal, that may be read over many times and to hit best books lists of this year.
Excerpts and review @ https://more2read.com/review/american-histories-by-john-edgar-wideman/
March 17, 2018
I received a free Kindle copy of American Histories by John Edgar Wideman courtesy of Net Galley and Simon and Schuster, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.
I requested this book due to the description given on Net Galley. It sounded interesting and compelling. It is the first book by John Edgar Wideman that I have read.
I had very high hopes for this book after reading the description and reviews of other books by the author. Unfortunately, I found this book a struggle to read due to the author's style of writing. The book itself is a series of short stories dealing with the struggles and challenges of African Americans. These are stories that need to be told, but a more consisent and readable approach is needed.
As other reviewers have rated this book highly, I will not not recommend this book, but suggest that you get if from your local library before making a purchase decision.
I requested this book due to the description given on Net Galley. It sounded interesting and compelling. It is the first book by John Edgar Wideman that I have read.
I had very high hopes for this book after reading the description and reviews of other books by the author. Unfortunately, I found this book a struggle to read due to the author's style of writing. The book itself is a series of short stories dealing with the struggles and challenges of African Americans. These are stories that need to be told, but a more consisent and readable approach is needed.
As other reviewers have rated this book highly, I will not not recommend this book, but suggest that you get if from your local library before making a purchase decision.
June 16, 2018
This collection is really, really dense. don't expect a quick or easy read here. very dark and at times the stream of consciousness style I just couldn't work with. it's not a bad collection. just not for me.
March 11, 2019
Sad... Gripping... tears the soul to shreds to think of people treated this way.
March 11, 2018
This book is difficult to read. I don't mean “difficult to read” in the sense that it is a portraying a reality too horrible and too injustice to contemplate, although the reality that it is attempting to portray is indeed horrible and unjust. It is difficult to read in the sense that it is often difficult to tell what exactly is happening in the stories and who is doing what to whom.
It is of course not necessary for every book to be entertaining in the way that, for example, books by J. K. Rowling or P. G. Wodehouse are entertaining. Serious and even unpleasant books about serious and unpleasant topics are not just important. They are essential. Wideman reportedly has written such books. I have not read Wideman's other books, but I have read the opinions of well-informed people of good will who have said that Wideman's writings are important and deserve attention. The writings have won many awards. I hope in the future that I will have a chance to read something else by him. But I cannot recommend this book to anyone.
It is sometimes difficult to tell which selections are memoirs and which selections are fiction. Perhaps they are all fiction, but it is difficult to tell in some cases. In other cases, it's not so hard. Since, for example, I have not read in the newspapers or on Wideman's Wikipedia entry that he once climbed on the Williamsburg Bridge, stripped to his underwear, and threated to jump, I guess this story is fiction, even though the story's protagonist is a man whose life details are seemingly similar to Wideman's. Surely, if Wideman had actually threatened spectacular public suicide, it would have made the news, right? On the other hand, the story when he lists names of family members (they all share the surname Wideman) and their dates of birth and death, and writes about his feelings about his family, is non-fiction. Am I right? Or is this some sort of post-modern writerly trick where the writer mixes true and made-up material and proves that all information is unreliable and as a result …. what? Trust no one? Stop reading the newspaper? Give up hope?
Some stories are better because they feature characters that are historical (Frederick Douglas, John Brown, Nat Turner) and therefore clearly not the author. The reader is given some solid ground to stand on.
There is a certain sameness in the authorial voice throughout all the stories, even when it is difficult to tell who is narrating and why. For example, in many stories, the protagonist is a older man who admires at some point in the story, sometimes generally, sometimes specifically, female rear ends. These moments of posterior admiration pass quickly and I don't think they would offend most readers, but still – how about drawing the reader a character who is clearly different, at least in some respects?
One story, which has appeared in the New Yorker, is about the difficulties of being a university-level writing teacher, as I believe Wideman is now or perhaps has been. Although this story is more interesting than the usual entry in this genre, I find stories about by university writing professors about university writing professors to be a genre with, to be charitable, little potential.
I received a free electronic advance review copy of this book via Netgalley and Simon & Schuster.
It is of course not necessary for every book to be entertaining in the way that, for example, books by J. K. Rowling or P. G. Wodehouse are entertaining. Serious and even unpleasant books about serious and unpleasant topics are not just important. They are essential. Wideman reportedly has written such books. I have not read Wideman's other books, but I have read the opinions of well-informed people of good will who have said that Wideman's writings are important and deserve attention. The writings have won many awards. I hope in the future that I will have a chance to read something else by him. But I cannot recommend this book to anyone.
It is sometimes difficult to tell which selections are memoirs and which selections are fiction. Perhaps they are all fiction, but it is difficult to tell in some cases. In other cases, it's not so hard. Since, for example, I have not read in the newspapers or on Wideman's Wikipedia entry that he once climbed on the Williamsburg Bridge, stripped to his underwear, and threated to jump, I guess this story is fiction, even though the story's protagonist is a man whose life details are seemingly similar to Wideman's. Surely, if Wideman had actually threatened spectacular public suicide, it would have made the news, right? On the other hand, the story when he lists names of family members (they all share the surname Wideman) and their dates of birth and death, and writes about his feelings about his family, is non-fiction. Am I right? Or is this some sort of post-modern writerly trick where the writer mixes true and made-up material and proves that all information is unreliable and as a result …. what? Trust no one? Stop reading the newspaper? Give up hope?
Some stories are better because they feature characters that are historical (Frederick Douglas, John Brown, Nat Turner) and therefore clearly not the author. The reader is given some solid ground to stand on.
There is a certain sameness in the authorial voice throughout all the stories, even when it is difficult to tell who is narrating and why. For example, in many stories, the protagonist is a older man who admires at some point in the story, sometimes generally, sometimes specifically, female rear ends. These moments of posterior admiration pass quickly and I don't think they would offend most readers, but still – how about drawing the reader a character who is clearly different, at least in some respects?
One story, which has appeared in the New Yorker, is about the difficulties of being a university-level writing teacher, as I believe Wideman is now or perhaps has been. Although this story is more interesting than the usual entry in this genre, I find stories about by university writing professors about university writing professors to be a genre with, to be charitable, little potential.
I received a free electronic advance review copy of this book via Netgalley and Simon & Schuster.
November 19, 2018
This was quite an interesting collection of short pieces, with a mixture of historical perspective and current events and personal life. At times, it was challenging to follow the lines of some of the stories and figure out what they were really referring to or talking about - sometimes this seemed intentional, as if it was supposed to be interpreted in many ways, but other times I think I just didn't fully understand them. Wideman definitely has a distinctive voice...intensely beautiful in many stories, rambling in others, stream of consciousness throughout. I enjoyed the ones where the narration felt more personal, mostly I think because then I could follow what was happening, but I think my favorite pieces were Williamsburg Bridge and Empire for different reasons: the first because of its interesting perspective and the amount of reflection that was packed into it and the second because it was such a good allegory.
June 2, 2018
I wasn’t sure where the writer was going with this book but picked it up pit it aside and then picked it up again and realizing the narratives which the writer was giving us was an insight into the persons who had experienced these times instead of being unable to do something about it changed the thoughts into a mind challenging novel.. I found the conversation for each instance worthy of stopping and imagining these happenings instead of one which couldn’t be done to one’s which stirred up the imagination of the writer. Using John Brown actions at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia one could think back to how the current conditions of this era could produce a person who was so strongly against slavery and could attempt to do something about it. It was easy to visualize how Frederick Douglass could have used his skills as the result of being able to read and write while many of his races ‘could not do so without risking death. And it goes on with each collection of memories a wondering “what if”
April 20, 2018
A book of high and lows the highs overpowering the less worthy parts. What stands out for me, a white person which is relevant in Wideman’s universe are the stories about an imagined interchange between the Abolitionist John Brown and the black philosopher Frederic Douglas, the confessions of NatTurner, his writings about being a family member visiting imprisoned loved ones and a story where a creative writing professor critiques a white student’s attempt to illuminate racism.
Especially powerful is Nat Turner’s confession telling how his mother nursed both he and the master’s daughter at the same time and how painful it is for a black man to escape what white people place upon their identity and sense of being. From this viewpoint his rebellion is completely understandable and tragic at the very same time.
A powerful book.
Especially powerful is Nat Turner’s confession telling how his mother nursed both he and the master’s daughter at the same time and how painful it is for a black man to escape what white people place upon their identity and sense of being. From this viewpoint his rebellion is completely understandable and tragic at the very same time.
A powerful book.
March 22, 2018
In American Histories, Wideman brilliantly exploits a “threefold ordering of times”, offering the reader a story in the time of its narrator, the time in which the narrative takes place, and in historical time.
In the first story of American Histories, John Brown and Frederick Douglass debate the morality and tactics of a slave uprising. Both men are willing to give their lives, and deaths to end slavery. Wideman narrates the debate in the voices of Brown, Douglass, a modern storyteller, and strikingly, a “colored John Brown”, all living the legacy of JB and FD.
In other stories, Wideman remembers his dead family, tells a hall of mirrors story of watchers watching watchers watching, and a greek tragedy of murdered and murderers.
In the first story of American Histories, John Brown and Frederick Douglass debate the morality and tactics of a slave uprising. Both men are willing to give their lives, and deaths to end slavery. Wideman narrates the debate in the voices of Brown, Douglass, a modern storyteller, and strikingly, a “colored John Brown”, all living the legacy of JB and FD.
In other stories, Wideman remembers his dead family, tells a hall of mirrors story of watchers watching watchers watching, and a greek tragedy of murdered and murderers.
January 30, 2019
I think I would need to spend a month reading and rereading this story collection to even come close to understanding it. The imagination, the range, the anger, the deep sadness, the conjured dialogues, the word play, the poetry, the suggestions of memoir and autobiography, the depth, the rifes, the music, and most of all, the movie audience full of girls like Precious watching "Precious," which will stay with me for a very long time. Wideman creates a complex world and kaleidoscope of lives that I as a reader try to simultaneously inhabit and question, but I find myself an uncomfortable observor, voyeur even, unable to quite understand what it is Wideman wants me to know. I feel the pain but find myself unable to understand it or put it into words.
June 18, 2025
Wideman's depictions of violence and frank commentary on race are occasionally discomfiting, and sensitive readers may find it upsetting. But the truth he is attempting to convey is harsh — racism breeds monstrous acts and perpetuates terror. Wideman's fictional Nat Turner explains eloquently, "I decided to kill white people when the voice I hear sometimes...said you don't need them...Do not need the heaven and hell in their churches. Not the hell on earth they make of this Virginia."
-Lisa Butts
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
-Lisa Butts
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
May 22, 2018
I generally don’t embrace stream of consciousness writing, but a number of these deeply personal short stories / essays / journals convinced me to let that go. “Williamsburg Bridge”, “Nat Turner Confesses” and “Bonds” were standouts for me.
Minor note re: “Yellow Sea”. I found this meditation on two films (Yellow Sea and Precious) compelling, and so looked them up to find out more about them. A number of key plot points Wideman describes in “Yellow Sea” don’t seem to be in the films.
Minor note re: “Yellow Sea”. I found this meditation on two films (Yellow Sea and Precious) compelling, and so looked them up to find out more about them. A number of key plot points Wideman describes in “Yellow Sea” don’t seem to be in the films.
October 12, 2024
Meandering in a pretending-to-go-somewhere way.
Okay, I will give it another try. I promise. I will keep trying until I see the light. I promise. Please don't punish me.
Did not love"taste for a white woman" (page 147 hardcover). Yeah, I know, sex is the groovy, gorgeous language of older literary men of both races (there are only two in this worldview).
But still, I am confused by the rules.
Okay, I will give it another try. I promise. I will keep trying until I see the light. I promise. Please don't punish me.
Did not love"taste for a white woman" (page 147 hardcover). Yeah, I know, sex is the groovy, gorgeous language of older literary men of both races (there are only two in this worldview).
But still, I am confused by the rules.
July 19, 2025
Wideman tackles major issues here, he'll take pains to remind you of it, but somehow he often ends up using the least engaging ways of doing so, almost every story here feels done at an arm's length. When talking about racism, aesthetics should rather take a second seat to pure punching power. There's also the occasional boasting of the depths of his reading and his catholic knowledge of assorted arts... which leads to the unleashed cringe of "Yellow Sea". I mean.
August 10, 2018
This felt too much like the author had "cast-offs" that he decided to throw together and make a book. Sometimes I am very pleasantly surprised by how effective short stories can be but that was not the case here. I had trouble following the story lines and sometimes understanding who the characters were.
September 30, 2020
This is an exquisite tapestry of short stories mostly told as an exposition of the black experience. Some of the vignettes are painful to which to listen, and I would forewarn those looking for scholarship to accompany the reading/listening to this work with a good historical almanac - but overall it's an enjoyable experience.
April 13, 2018
I'm always very interested in John Brown, so got this book bc of his "conversation" with Frederick Douglass. I read thru most of that first section and looked at other sections.
Didn't care for freestyle prose.
Not what I was expected, but obviously my shortcoming, not Wideman's.
Didn't care for freestyle prose.
Not what I was expected, but obviously my shortcoming, not Wideman's.
October 18, 2019
A collection of rhapsodic stories that reminded me of Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," especially "Williamsburg Bridge." Most of the stories are quite short and remind me of what people referred to as "voice pieces" forty years ago.
August 12, 2024
John Edgar Wideman's writing pops; it is beautifully executed and, in the case of these short stories, conceptually and narratively innovative. The author insinuates himself, or someone like himself, into several stories while traveling over a century back in others. An inventive and refreshing book from this American master.
March 27, 2018
Wow. Powerful stories. I read one in an anthology and it inspired me to read more. I've been missing out, and at the same time I'm glad that I have a lot of Wideman's work to look forward to reading.
June 8, 2018
Although I thought a couple of the stories were excellent, for the most part this collection didn't really engage me, and the writing style didn't work for me.
May 12, 2019
This book was a collection of short stories about race, memoirs and history. it was mildly interesting.
July 10, 2019
Hit or miss, this collection. Are they stories? Essays? Mini-Memoirs? Was hard to tell and often rambling in ways that weren't enjoyable. But I still love JEW.
October 5, 2020
I struggled through the writing style. Actually enjoyed only 2 of the stories ...My Dead & Maps and Ledgers; and had to push through with the rest
November 15, 2022
Didn’t finish this. Will try again.
May 5, 2025
I was confused by this book about 80% of the time when I was reading it. There would be moments of clarity followed by long stretches of confusion.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews