John Edgar Wideman

"Ce livre, sa langue, ses mots, les voix qui le composent, sont nés de la tentative que jai faite de capter ce qui sest amorcé entre mon frère et moi il y a quatre ans : le désir nous est venu de par

En 1955, un adolescent noir, Emmett Till, prend le train à Chicago pour rendre visite à sa famille. Accusé d’avoir sifflé une femme blanche, il est kidnappé et assassiné. Ses meurtriers, blancs, sero

LA TRILOGIE DE HOMEWOOD

Tras siete años de ausencia por haber cometido un asesinato, Albert Wikes regresa a Homewood, gueto negro cuya personalidad, con el paso del tiempo, va desvaneciéndose. De esta decadencia –que consis

Ayer te estuve buscando es una saga en la que los personajes aparecen y desaparecen, recorriendo la piel y la sangre de una comunidad negra entre los años de la Depresión y el regreso de Vietnam. Una comunidad abandonada a su musica, a la musica que con r

A powerful assemblage of short stories exploring late-in-life angst through personal myth, cultural memory, and riffs on an empire scorched by its own hubris (O, The Oprah Magazine) from award-winning author John Edgar Widemanhis first collection in more than a decade.Race and its reverberations are at the core of this slim, powerful volume, a blend of fiction, memoir, and reimagined history, in which the boundaries between those forms are murky and ever shifting (TheBoston Globe). In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country.In JB & FD, Wideman reimagines conversations between John Brown, the antislavery crusader, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and oratorconversations that produce a fantastical, rich correspondence that spans years and ideologies. Maps and Ledgers eavesdrops on a brother and sister today as they ponder their fathers killing of another man. Williamsburg Bridge sits inside a man sitting on a bridge who contemplates his life before he decides to jump. My Dead is a story about how the already-departed demand more time, more space in the lives of those who survive them.American Histories is an important addition to Widemans body of writing and a remarkable demonstration of his ability to address social issues through a range of fictional forms and styles (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). An extended meditation on family, history, and loss, American Histories weaves together historical fact, philosophical wisdom, and deeply personal vignettes. This is Wideman at his bestemotionally precise and intellectually stimulatingan extraordinary collection by a master.

A rare triumph (The New York Times Book Review), this powerful memoir about the divergent paths taken by two brothers is a classic work from one of the greatest figures in American literature: a reflection on John Edgar Widemans family and his brothers incarcerationa classic that is as relevant now as when originally published in 1984.A brave and brilliant (The Philadelphia Inquirer) portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, the classic John Edgar Wideman memoir, Brothers and Keepers, is a haunting portrait of two brothersone an award-winning writer, the other a fugitive wanted for a robbery that resulted in a 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, affection, and guilt that connect Wideman and his brother and measures the distance that lies between them. If you care at all about brotherhood and dignitythis is a must-read book (The Denver Post). With a new afterword by his brother Robert Wideman, recently released after more than fifty years in prison.

One of John Widemans most ambitious and celebrated works, the lyrical masterpiece and PEN/Faulkner winner inspired by the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia row house owned by black liberation group Move.In 1985, police bombed a West Philadelphia row house owned by the Afrocentric cult known as Move, killing eleven people and starting a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the heart of Philadelphia Fire is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and who becomes obsessed with the search for a lone survivor of the event: a young boy seen running from the flames.Award-winning author John Edgar Wideman brings these events and their repercussions to shocking life in this seminal novel about identity after tragedy. Reminiscent of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man (Time) and Norman Mailers The Executioners Song, Philadelphia Fire is a masterful, culturally significant work that explores a major historical event and takes us on a brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America.

*A Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Book of the Year*From John Edgar Wideman, a modern master of language (The New York Times Book Review), comes a stunning story collection that spans a range of topics from Michael Jordan to Emmett Till, from childhood memories to the final day in a prison cell.In Look For Me and Ill Be Gone, his sixth collection of stories, John Edgar Wideman imbues with energy and life the concerns that have consistently infused his fiction and nonfiction. How does it feel to grow up in America, a nation thatdespite knowing better, despite its own laws, despite experiencing for hundreds of years the deadly perils and heartbreak of racial divisionencourages (sometimes unwittingly, but often on purpose) its citizens to see themselves as colored or white, as inferior or superior.Never content merely to tell a story, Wideman seeks once again to create language that delivers passages like jazz solos, and virtuosic manipulations of time to entangle past and present. The story Separation begins with a boy afraid to stand alone beside his grandfathers coffin, then wends its way back and forth from Pittsburgh to ancient Sumer. Atlanta Murders starts with two chickens crossing a road and becomes a dark riff, contemplating Evidence of Things Not Seen, James Baldwins report on the 19791981 child murders in Atlanta, Georgia.Comprised of fictions of the highest caliber and relevancy by a writer whose imagination and intellect prove his continued vitality...with vigor and soul (Entertainment Weekly), Look For Me and Ill Be Gone will entrance and surprise committed Wideman fans and newcomers alike.

A major literary figure tells “a searching tale of loss, recovery, and déja vu that is part memoir and what-if speculation, part polemic and exposé” (The Washington Post) about two generations of one

From master of language (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman, a reissue of the revered trilogy that launched his careertwo novels and story collection all set in Widemans own hometown.Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday provide a stunning introduction to the uncompromising work of John Edgar Wideman, whose literary achievements have inspired TheNew York Times to name him one of Americas premier writers of fiction.Damballahs narratives examine the vexed history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood whose origins are rooted in a time when slavery was still legal in the United States of America. The novels Hiding Place and Sent for You Yesterday personalize and interrogate that historys presence in the contemporary lives of Homewood people and all Americans.Deeply concerned that designations such as economically oppressed or Black continue to dismiss and marginalize rather than embrace communities like the one in which he was raised, John Edgar Widemanemploying words on the page as his weaponhas dedicated himself to recording the weight, beauty, complexity, and justice that he believes Homewoods voices, stories, and lives have earned and deserve.In 1983, The Homewood Trilogy signaled the arrival of a major voice in American literature. Forty years later, this edition of the Trilogy celebrates Widemans ongoing contribution by offering these masterworks to a new generation of readers.

A powerful and stunning (Publishers Weekly, starred review) selection of the best of John Edgar Widemans 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 writersfrom Eudora Welty to George Saundersall of whom are acknowledged masters of the short story. Widemans 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).Widemans 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, Gods 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 Widemans selected stories celebrates the lifelong significance of this major American writers essential contribution to a formilluminating 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).

À l’âge de quatorze ans, John Edgar Wideman découvre dans la presse américaine une photo du visage mutilé d’Emmett Till. Tout comme Wideman, ce dernier est âgé de quatorze ans, et tout comme Wideman,

Une visite rendue au frère de l’auteur en prison, la foule qui accueille Mandela au Cap lors de sa libération, un couple noir qui s’embrasse dans Manhattan, le génocide au Rwanda ou encore le mouveme