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Wideman John Edgar
Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir
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A haunting portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, Brothers and Keepers is John Edgar Wideman’s seminal memoir about two brothers one an award-winning novelist, the other a fugitive wanted for robbery and murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system.
A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, tenderness, and guilt that connect Wideman to his brother and measures the distance that lies between them.
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.
Philadelphia Fire: A Novel
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From one of America’s premier writers of fiction” (New York Times) comes this novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the back-to-nature, Afrocentric cult known as Move. The bombing killed eleven people and started a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the center of the story is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and his search for the lone survivor of the fire a young boy who was seen running from the flames.
An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn't a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francsisco Chronicle).
Sent for You Yesterday
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Reimagining the black neighborhood of his youth Homewood, Pittsburgh -Wideman creates a dazzling and evocative milieu. From the wild and uninhibited 1920s to the narcotized 1970s, "he establishes aamythological and symbolic link between character and landscape, language and plot, that in the hands of a less visionary writer might be little more than stale sociology" (New York Times Book Review).
Briefs
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BRIEFS is a groundbreaking new collection of "microstories" from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form. Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explodes our assumptions about the genre. Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure-hip-hop zen-where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored. A relief worker's Sudan bulletin, a jogger's bullet-dodging daydreams, your neighbor's fears and fantasies, an absent mother's regrets-Wideman's storytellers are eavesdroppers and peeping Toms, diarists and haiku historians. The characters and compass points range from Darfur to Manhattan, from Pittsburgh to Paris, but the true coordinates these stories chart are the psychic and emotional fault lines beneath our common ground. BRIEFS is an unforgettable map of the lives we inherit, those we invent, and the worlds we wander between first and last loves.
Damballah (Homewood Trilogy)
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- Notes: Manufacturer NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
- ISBN13: 9780395897973
- Influence: New
Description
This collection of interrelated stories spans the history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. With stunning lyricism, Wideman sings of "dead children in garbage cans, of gospel and basketball, of lost gods and dead fathers" (John Leonard). It is a celebration of people who, in the face of crisis, uphold one another--with grace, courage, and dignity.
Fanon
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A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Algeria’s war for independence. His last book, The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, inspired leaders of diverse liberation movements: Steve Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the Black Panthers in the States. Wideman’s novel is disguised as the project of a contemporary African American novelist,Thomas, who undertakes writing a life of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay, part love story, Fanon introduces the French film director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon’s legacy through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to rectify.
Wideman John Edgar News
Wideman parole hearing traumatic for victim's parents
Chicago Tribune - May 23, 2012
Wideman parole hearing traumatic for victim's parentsWideman, now 42, is the son of John Edgar Wideman, the celebrated African-American author who grew up in Pittsburgh. The parole board in Phoenix last year ruled unanimously that the prisoner had too many psychological problems that had not been and more »
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National briefs: Troops told to shape up
Pittsburgh Post Gazette - May 23, 2012
PHOENIX -- Jacob Wideman lost his bid for parole on Thursday and will continue serving a sentence of 25 years to life for the killing of his summer camp bunkmate, Eric Kane, in Arizona when they were both 16. Wideman, 42, is the son of John Edgar
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Lulu.com Offers 5 Books Not to Miss This Summer
MarketWatch (press release) - May 23, 2012
John Edgar Wideman - MacArthur Genius Grant and Faulkner Award winning author publishes his latest groundbreaking collection of micro-stories that unveil an utterly original voice and structure--hip-hop Zen--where each story is a single breath, and more »
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Lulu.com Offers 5 Books Not to Miss This Summer
GlobeNewsWire (press release) - May 23, 2012
John Edgar Wideman - MacArthur Genius Grant and Faulkner Award winning author publishes his latest groundbreaking collection of micro-stories that unveil an utterly original voice and structure—hip-hop Zen—where each story is a single breath, and more »
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Youth of Color: Watched and Shot
CounterPunch - May 23, 2012
PEN/Faulkner award-winning novelist, John Edgar Wideman, once asked, “Who of us is not on death row?” Trayvon's street in Sanford, Florida, where he “walked while black” became a death row for him. Many youth of color walk or inhabit similar death rows and more »
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