Languages of home : essays on writing, hoop, and American lives, 1971-2025
Edition
First Scribner hardcover edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, 2025.
Physical Description
xiii, 382 pages ; 24 cm
Summary
"John Edgar Wideman, acclaimed since the early 1970s for his award-winning fiction and memoirs, has long been engaged in a project to redefine, from the perspective of an American of color, the wondrous and appalling power of his country's literary culture and history. Now, curated by him, in this first-time collection from his extensive body of long-form journalism and biographical essays, readers are offered a chance to see and judge for themselves how Wideman has proven himself to be a luminous witness of America's history. This volume goes beyond mere compilation; its challenging, insightful critical essays tell the story of a nation in transition--from the shame of legalized human slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the rise of the Obama era, and beyond. Originally featured in publications such as Esquire, Vogue, and The New Yorker, these narratives explore the elusive cores of an American culture, politics, and identity. With his unique depictions of iconic figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Emmett Till, and Michael Jordan, and intimate questioning of his own life, Wideman shares his original views of the changing tides of an American experience."
Notes
Title dates on the title page and front cover of dust jacket differ.
Contents
- Introduction / Fear in the Streets
- Review: The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt
- Review: The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright by Michel Fabre
- Defining the Black Voice in Fiction
- Review: Stomping the Blues: Ritual in Black Music and Speech
- The Language of Home
- Preface: Charles W. Chesnutt and the WPA Narratives
- What is Afro, What is American?
- The Black Writer and the Magic of the Word
- Michael Jordan Leaps the Great Divide
- Preface: Breaking Ice
- Introduction: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
- Dead Black Men and Other Fallout from the American Dream
- Monument to Malcolm
- Malcolm X: The Art of Autobiography
- Preface: The Homewood Books
- Father Stories
- Introduction: Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Playing Dennis Rodman
- Justice: A Perspective
- The Silence of Thelonious Monk
- In Praise of Silence
- This Man Can Play
- What is a Brother?
- The Night I Was Nobody
- Foreword: Every Tongue Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston
- Whose War: The Color of Terror
- Looking at Emmett Till
- At the Island's End
- from The Louis Till Blues Project
- Witness: A Letter from France
- Doo-Wop.