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You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories, 1981-2018
A powerful and “stunning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) selection of the best of John Edgar Wideman’s short stories over his fifty-year career, representing the wide range of his intellectual and artistic pursuits.When John Edgar Wideman won the PEN Malamud Award in 2019, he joined a list of esteemed writers—from Eudora Welty to George Saunders—all of whom are acknowledged masters of the short story. Wideman’s commitment to short fiction has been lifelong, and here he gathers a representative selection from throughout his career, stories that “have a wary, brooding spirit, a lonely intelligence…[and] air the problem of consciousness, including the fragile contingency of our existence” (The New York Times). Wideman’s stories are grounded in the streets and the people of Homewood, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of his childhood, but they range far beyond there, to the small western towns of Wyoming and historic Philadelphia, the contemporary world and the ancient past. He explores the interior lives of his characters, and the external pressures that shape them. These stories are as intellectually intricate as they are rich with the language and character. “Wideman has been compared to William Faulkner and James Baldwin…[these] prove that he is every bit as masterful a cartographer of the American spirit as his forebears" (Esquire). Comprised of thirty-five stories drawn from past collections (American Histories, Briefs, God’s Gym, All Stories Are True, Fever, and Damballah), and an introductory essay by the National Book Critics Circle board member and scholar Walton Muyumba, this volume of Wideman’s selected stories celebrates the lifelong significance of this major American writer’s essential contribution to a form—illuminating the ways that he has made it his own. “If there were any doubts Wideman belongs to the American canon, this puts them to bed” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
487 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 6, 2021
58 people are currently reading
2235 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 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 2, 2021
YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU by John Edgar Wideman
My words can't do the stories in this book justice, but......here goes, anyway -
Wise. Profound. Full of HEART. Thoughtful. Heavy. Art.
My favorites are the stories in the first 1/4 of the book.
I WON an early copy from a Goodreads Giveaway! Thanks to the author, Scribner, and Goodreads.
My words can't do the stories in this book justice, but......here goes, anyway -
Wise. Profound. Full of HEART. Thoughtful. Heavy. Art.
My favorites are the stories in the first 1/4 of the book.
I WON an early copy from a Goodreads Giveaway! Thanks to the author, Scribner, and Goodreads.
May 7, 2021
Beautiful writing. Faulkner comparison very apt. Urges you to slow down and parse each sentence
Humanist, all characters treated with care and curiosity. Didn’t live arrangement of the stories though
Humanist, all characters treated with care and curiosity. Didn’t live arrangement of the stories though
May 28, 2021
I didn’t read the entire collection but I started with at least 3 stories. Very well written and smart short stories. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.
April 1, 2022
This collection brilliantly and artistically draws a portrait of Pittsburgh, America and the life and family of Wideman. There are several prose poems in this book. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, I especially appreciated his settings. The stories are profound. Tragic. And a window into America.
June 22, 2021
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway. This is an excellent anthology of Wideman´s short fiction. Some of the stories are set in Homewood neighborhood in Pittsburgh wherethe author grew up. Others move easily among places like Manhattan, Paris, Philadelphia and Cape Town, South Africa.
There is also an introductory essay by Walton Muyumba that offers valuable information about the author and the contexts surrounding his writing and the 35 stories. My favorite piece is titled “Weight,” narrated by a writer who shares a draft of a story with his mother in an attempt to bring her closer to how he is living as an adult. Wideman shines also in stories that tunnel through history or the narrator’s consciousness as they build to their reveals, such as “Maps and Ledgers,” in which a writing professor ruminates on stories such as that of an ancestor who escaped from slavery.
Overall Wideman writes beautifully and candidly about male relationships—fathers and sons, brothers, friends—with a kind of X-ray vision- making him one of one of America's most audacious storyteller of the last forty years.
There is also an introductory essay by Walton Muyumba that offers valuable information about the author and the contexts surrounding his writing and the 35 stories. My favorite piece is titled “Weight,” narrated by a writer who shares a draft of a story with his mother in an attempt to bring her closer to how he is living as an adult. Wideman shines also in stories that tunnel through history or the narrator’s consciousness as they build to their reveals, such as “Maps and Ledgers,” in which a writing professor ruminates on stories such as that of an ancestor who escaped from slavery.
Overall Wideman writes beautifully and candidly about male relationships—fathers and sons, brothers, friends—with a kind of X-ray vision- making him one of one of America's most audacious storyteller of the last forty years.
June 30, 2021
Very happy I read this, my introduction to this author. Want to read more of him. I think “uncompromising” is a good way for me to think of him. And that can wear me down over the long haul of a huge collection.
One of the short short stories, or “Briefs” is titled review. It begins, “You don’t have to be very smart to write a review of a book of short stories. All you need to say is that some stories in the book are better than others.”
One of the short short stories, or “Briefs” is titled review. It begins, “You don’t have to be very smart to write a review of a book of short stories. All you need to say is that some stories in the book are better than others.”
August 10, 2021
4.5 stars!
The end of the book was less engaging for me than the first 1/2 but the earlier stories - WOW. they left me rearranged, stunned, breathless. I felt fundamentally changed by these stories and have placed them in that pocket of stories I keep near to my heart, like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" or George Saunders "The Tenth of December" - these stories that feel like friends, long lasting, deep and connected. Thank you for this book!!!!
The end of the book was less engaging for me than the first 1/2 but the earlier stories - WOW. they left me rearranged, stunned, breathless. I felt fundamentally changed by these stories and have placed them in that pocket of stories I keep near to my heart, like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" or George Saunders "The Tenth of December" - these stories that feel like friends, long lasting, deep and connected. Thank you for this book!!!!
May 24, 2021
You made me love you, Pittsburgh. And JEW.
October 11, 2022
I could write a review, but Wideman took care of that already.
(To this, I'll only add that this collection is heavy. I had to take a break and read something else every once in a while.)
"Review"
You don’t have to be very smart to write a review of a book of short stories. All you need to say is that some stories in the book are better than others. Everybody agrees that’s the way it works with collections of short stories. It’s not necessary to read the stories, just scan the table of contents and cite in your review the title of one story you say you like and one you don’t like. This specificity will impress the readers of your review, establish your credibility and seriousness. Don’t stress yourself selecting which title to admire or pan since almost none of your readers will ever read any of the stories you’re reviewing. Readers will be less favorably disposed toward your review if you say all the stories in the collection suck or all the stories are great because your readers, based upon their previous experience of reading or not reading books of stories and reading or not reading reviews of books of stories and based upon their previous experience of life in general which is, after all, what stories are about, will have concluded that some things are better than other things and this being the case, for stories as well, why stir up readers by suggesting you think your experience of reading stories or your experience of life in general is different than your reader’s experience and maybe you believe you’re smarter than they are, whereas everybody knows you don’t need to be born all that smart to write a review of a book of stories or write the stories either. (336-337).
(To this, I'll only add that this collection is heavy. I had to take a break and read something else every once in a while.)
"Review"
You don’t have to be very smart to write a review of a book of short stories. All you need to say is that some stories in the book are better than others. Everybody agrees that’s the way it works with collections of short stories. It’s not necessary to read the stories, just scan the table of contents and cite in your review the title of one story you say you like and one you don’t like. This specificity will impress the readers of your review, establish your credibility and seriousness. Don’t stress yourself selecting which title to admire or pan since almost none of your readers will ever read any of the stories you’re reviewing. Readers will be less favorably disposed toward your review if you say all the stories in the collection suck or all the stories are great because your readers, based upon their previous experience of reading or not reading books of stories and reading or not reading reviews of books of stories and based upon their previous experience of life in general which is, after all, what stories are about, will have concluded that some things are better than other things and this being the case, for stories as well, why stir up readers by suggesting you think your experience of reading stories or your experience of life in general is different than your reader’s experience and maybe you believe you’re smarter than they are, whereas everybody knows you don’t need to be born all that smart to write a review of a book of stories or write the stories either. (336-337).
September 13, 2022
I absolutely hated this book I could not even finish it because their is a word that very bothersome to me and will be to blacks as well .the trigger word I'm going to tell you is nigger and I don't like it because I have black friends and its offensive to them
April 6, 2024
4.5/5
John Edgar Wideman is a rare talent and a towering intellect in our pantheon of living authors. He merges so many worlds seamlessly and authentically. His stories help me understand the multiple stratum of life and experiences of people of color.What an amazing contribution to literature.
John Edgar Wideman is a rare talent and a towering intellect in our pantheon of living authors. He merges so many worlds seamlessly and authentically. His stories help me understand the multiple stratum of life and experiences of people of color.What an amazing contribution to literature.
April 24, 2021
great book
May 10, 2021
I received this as part of a GoodReads giveaway.
I think it suffered from the same issue many anthologies do of this length--all the stories kind of blur and wash into each other.
I think it suffered from the same issue many anthologies do of this length--all the stories kind of blur and wash into each other.
December 19, 2021
You will work for it. Exhilarating, sometimes exhausting to keep up with. Nobody writes stories like Wideman.
December 11, 2022
wanted to like it more than I did
For me like Alice Munro this author is a fine good writer who does not hold my attention. At least I eventually finished the book.
For me like Alice Munro this author is a fine good writer who does not hold my attention. At least I eventually finished the book.
June 17, 2024
I have only read one other book by Professor Wideman, and it was the masterful "Look For Me and I'll Be Gone". In having read this compilation of what's considered to be some of his most notable short stories, this is one beautiful, hellish collection that captures the black experience during slavery, and the legacy of Jim Crow and the American justice system.
The stories are compiled from Wideman's "Damballah", "Fever", "All Stories are True", "Briefs" and "American Histories". With his stories centering in the Homewood Community of Pittsburgh.
I had to research what Damballah meant- and it seems to be how the supernatural, magic, and family ties are all interlinked by the horrors of slavery, and what it means to be resilient.
Stories like "Daddy Garbage" (from Damballah) and "Newborn Thrown in the Trash" (from "All Stories are True) are variations of how black children and bodies are often expendable. "Daddy Garbage" is about the discovery of a dead baby girl, found frozen and what decision is made to get rid of her body. Tinged with both horror and spellbinding, gorgeous sentences- beauty and horror is fused to exemplify in a visceral level of how America often discards its black bodies with swift disregard. Except the story ends with a haunting last sentence, "drop her easy now, lean over as far as you can, and drop her easy" (Wideman 33).
“Tommy" is a riff on Wideman's grappling over the incarceration of both his brother and son. These motifs will always pervade Wideman's work. "Solitary" is about a mother who visits her son in prison, as is "All Stories are True".
Wideman also writes about the legacies of black artists who have been celebrated and lifted to immortal martyr status and humanizes them, by bring them back to their human selves: "Surfiction" (Charles Chestnutt); "Fever" is the grizzly aftermath of a yellow fever outbreak that killed many; "JD and FD" is about John Brown and Frederick Douglass; "Haiku" is about Richard Wright; and "Ralph Waldo Emerson" is about the man behind the legacy of Invisible Man- and both Wright and Ellison are seen as the grandfathers of black protest literature of the 1940s and 1950s. "Nat Turner Confesses" is also another example of a historical figure Wideman includes.
"Briefs" are short, harrowing paragraphs that range in topics from the criminal system, the legacy of slavery, to the personal- failed relationships, sex, the need to alleviate loneliness, to simply, amazing examples of writing exercises that Wideman produces as if they were part of muscle memory, or the need to remember or forget.
I thought the masterpiece is the story "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over In Silence". Written from the point of view of a man trying to reach his dead friend's son, who is incarcerated- it is a master of both the personal, political and the struggle to process deep seated trauma, "the search pure in this sense, an experiment, driven by the simple urge to know. I learned how perversely the system functions, how slim your chances are winning are if you challenge it" (Wideman 279).
The narrator also thinks about what if the son of his dead friend were to come home and see him having sex with a young woman? What would happen? "What difference to the son whether or not I have a lover, or what her age might be?...What's wrong with sorting out my motivations, my ambivalence, calculating consequences" (Wideman 285).
Images of death, sexuality, sexual assault, sex as need, and paranoia are all harrowing, sorrowful moments that the stories in "You Made Me Love You" contain.
Although I loved these stories, it took a while for me to finish this collection. It's so damned sad!
Like other master writers of the black experience- Angelou, Baldwin, Morrison, Ellison, Wright, August Wilson- Wideman has his place with the gods of African American literature.
The stories are compiled from Wideman's "Damballah", "Fever", "All Stories are True", "Briefs" and "American Histories". With his stories centering in the Homewood Community of Pittsburgh.
I had to research what Damballah meant- and it seems to be how the supernatural, magic, and family ties are all interlinked by the horrors of slavery, and what it means to be resilient.
Stories like "Daddy Garbage" (from Damballah) and "Newborn Thrown in the Trash" (from "All Stories are True) are variations of how black children and bodies are often expendable. "Daddy Garbage" is about the discovery of a dead baby girl, found frozen and what decision is made to get rid of her body. Tinged with both horror and spellbinding, gorgeous sentences- beauty and horror is fused to exemplify in a visceral level of how America often discards its black bodies with swift disregard. Except the story ends with a haunting last sentence, "drop her easy now, lean over as far as you can, and drop her easy" (Wideman 33).
“Tommy" is a riff on Wideman's grappling over the incarceration of both his brother and son. These motifs will always pervade Wideman's work. "Solitary" is about a mother who visits her son in prison, as is "All Stories are True".
Wideman also writes about the legacies of black artists who have been celebrated and lifted to immortal martyr status and humanizes them, by bring them back to their human selves: "Surfiction" (Charles Chestnutt); "Fever" is the grizzly aftermath of a yellow fever outbreak that killed many; "JD and FD" is about John Brown and Frederick Douglass; "Haiku" is about Richard Wright; and "Ralph Waldo Emerson" is about the man behind the legacy of Invisible Man- and both Wright and Ellison are seen as the grandfathers of black protest literature of the 1940s and 1950s. "Nat Turner Confesses" is also another example of a historical figure Wideman includes.
"Briefs" are short, harrowing paragraphs that range in topics from the criminal system, the legacy of slavery, to the personal- failed relationships, sex, the need to alleviate loneliness, to simply, amazing examples of writing exercises that Wideman produces as if they were part of muscle memory, or the need to remember or forget.
I thought the masterpiece is the story "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over In Silence". Written from the point of view of a man trying to reach his dead friend's son, who is incarcerated- it is a master of both the personal, political and the struggle to process deep seated trauma, "the search pure in this sense, an experiment, driven by the simple urge to know. I learned how perversely the system functions, how slim your chances are winning are if you challenge it" (Wideman 279).
The narrator also thinks about what if the son of his dead friend were to come home and see him having sex with a young woman? What would happen? "What difference to the son whether or not I have a lover, or what her age might be?...What's wrong with sorting out my motivations, my ambivalence, calculating consequences" (Wideman 285).
Images of death, sexuality, sexual assault, sex as need, and paranoia are all harrowing, sorrowful moments that the stories in "You Made Me Love You" contain.
Although I loved these stories, it took a while for me to finish this collection. It's so damned sad!
Like other master writers of the black experience- Angelou, Baldwin, Morrison, Ellison, Wright, August Wilson- Wideman has his place with the gods of African American literature.
June 27, 2024
Thank you to the publisher and author for my ARC copy, which I won in a GoodReads giveaway.
I liked this collection enough to finish it. Wideman's writing is evocative, unique, often transporting and absorbing. I appreciated his broad range of ideas and topics. I especially enjoyed how he does dialogue, very direct and flowing and real. On the whole I agree with Walter Muyumba's claim in the introduction that Wideman's writing challenges readers to "reimagine themselves radically and improvisationally. Opening yourself to Wideman's structures, sounds, and sentences will liberate you from yourself, thus expanding and renewing your sense of self, time, and experience." Muyumba also described the writing as "musical", which I'd never have thought of myself but I can see what he means.
Still, my response overall is lukewarm. I just didn't relate to most of the stories enough. They have an artsy or experimental quality and I often felt like I wasn't sure what he was trying to do with a particular piece. I'd even say they aren't "stories"; they're so loosely constructed, musing, and generally plotless that I'd call them something like "prose paintings". Some readers might like this aspect but I did not. Note, though, this criticism doesn't apply to the short-shorts, which I found easier to connect with, sometimes more surprising and interesting than the regular-length fictions, and short enough that his meandering style didn't have a chance to take shape (or, to not take shape?).
I also didn't care for his use of autobiographical details. Some of the writing incorporates information about his family or himself and I don't know why, but the way he did it annoyed me. It made me wonder (ungenerously) if he was being either lazy, using personal details as an easy starting point and then writing whatever popped into his head about them; or indecisive, unsure whether he wanted to write a story or a memoir and so he aimlessly did both. Much of it was so transparently autobiographical that he must have intended the reader to take it as such, but some was less obvious, and I couldn't tell if I was supposed to know the difference, or if it was supposed to matter to my interpretation of the story. I ended up feeling, very subtly, that Wideman was being unnecessarily self-indulgent or self-centered.
I still intend to read Wideman's memoir, and I'd give one of his novels a try. But no more "stories" for me; this collection was plenty, and they're just not my thing.
I liked this collection enough to finish it. Wideman's writing is evocative, unique, often transporting and absorbing. I appreciated his broad range of ideas and topics. I especially enjoyed how he does dialogue, very direct and flowing and real. On the whole I agree with Walter Muyumba's claim in the introduction that Wideman's writing challenges readers to "reimagine themselves radically and improvisationally. Opening yourself to Wideman's structures, sounds, and sentences will liberate you from yourself, thus expanding and renewing your sense of self, time, and experience." Muyumba also described the writing as "musical", which I'd never have thought of myself but I can see what he means.
Still, my response overall is lukewarm. I just didn't relate to most of the stories enough. They have an artsy or experimental quality and I often felt like I wasn't sure what he was trying to do with a particular piece. I'd even say they aren't "stories"; they're so loosely constructed, musing, and generally plotless that I'd call them something like "prose paintings". Some readers might like this aspect but I did not. Note, though, this criticism doesn't apply to the short-shorts, which I found easier to connect with, sometimes more surprising and interesting than the regular-length fictions, and short enough that his meandering style didn't have a chance to take shape (or, to not take shape?).
I also didn't care for his use of autobiographical details. Some of the writing incorporates information about his family or himself and I don't know why, but the way he did it annoyed me. It made me wonder (ungenerously) if he was being either lazy, using personal details as an easy starting point and then writing whatever popped into his head about them; or indecisive, unsure whether he wanted to write a story or a memoir and so he aimlessly did both. Much of it was so transparently autobiographical that he must have intended the reader to take it as such, but some was less obvious, and I couldn't tell if I was supposed to know the difference, or if it was supposed to matter to my interpretation of the story. I ended up feeling, very subtly, that Wideman was being unnecessarily self-indulgent or self-centered.
I still intend to read Wideman's memoir, and I'd give one of his novels a try. But no more "stories" for me; this collection was plenty, and they're just not my thing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews