Bøger af John Edgar Wideman

"John Edgar Wideman's "slaveroad" is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds, and persists"--

In 1983, The Homewood Trilogy signaled the arrival of a major voice in American literature. Forty years later, this edition of the Trilogy celebrates Wideman's ongoing contribution by offering these masterworks to a new generation of readers.

“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 Wideman’s family and his brother’s incarceration—a 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 brothers—one 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 dignity…this 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.

Philadelphia Fire, now with a new introduction by prominent scholar and award-winning writer Imani Perry, is a masterful culturally significant work that takes on a 1985 police bombing in Philadelphia, which targeted the Black liberation group known as MOVE. At the heart of the novel is Cudjoe, a writer and exile returned to his old neighborhood, who becomes obsessed with the search for a young boy seen running from the flames. One of Wideman's most ambitious and celebrated works, Philadelphia Fire depicts a brutally honest journey through uniquely American despair.

In God's Gym, the celebrated author John Edgar Wideman offers stories that pulse with emotional electricity. The ten pieces here explore strength, both physical and spiritual. The collection opens with a man paying tribute to the quiet fortitude of his mother, a woman who "should wear a T-shirt: God's Gym." In the stories that follow, Wideman delivers powerful riffs on family and fate, basketball and belief. His mesmerizing prose features guest appearances by cultural luminaries as diverse as the Harlem Globetrotters, Frantz Fanon, Thelonious Monk, and Marilyn Monroe. As always, Wideman astounds with writing that moves from the intimate to the political, from shock to transcendence.

In plague-ridden eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a young itinerant black preacher searches for a mysterious, endangered African woman. His struggle to find her and save them both plummets them both into the nightmare of a society violently splitting itself into white and black. Spiraling outward from the core image of a cattle killing--the Xhosa people's ritual destruction of their herd in a vain attempt to resist European domination--the novel expands its narrator's search for meaning and love into the America, Europe and South Africa of yesterday and today.

?This is truly inimitable storytelling' Observer'[A] master of language' New York TimesA boy stands alone, unable to enter the room in which his grandfather's coffin lies. Freddie Jackson's song ?You Are My Lady' plays on the car radio as a son is brought to a prison cell in Arizona. A narrator contemplates the Atlanta child murders from 1979.Look For Me And I'll Be Gone is vital reading for anyone interested in the state of America today. Historical and contemporary, intimate and expansive, the stories here represent a pioneering writer whose innovation, form and imagination know no bounds.

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 writersfrom Eudora Welty to George Saundersall 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"e; (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 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).

';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' (The Boston 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 father's 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 Wideman's 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.

The seminal memoir from John Edgar Wideman, one of the standout black American writers of the modern age and winner of the 2017 Prix Femina Etranger

The lyrical masterpiece from John Edgar Wideman, one of the standout black American writers of the modern age and winner of the 2017 Prix Femina Etranger

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for ashort fiction, John Wideman has compiled an anthology featuring stories from each of the past winners.