American Histories

In this new short story collection, John Edgar Wideman takes the reader from the historical to the imaginary, the personal to the political, with a cast of real and fictional characters as diverse as Frederick Douglass, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Wideman’s own family.In one story Wideman imagines a conversation between white anti-slavery crusader John Brown and black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In another story a man sits on the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, considering whether to jump. American Histories is an extended meditation on family, history and loss. Emotionally precise and intellectually stimulating, this is Wideman at his best.

Reviews of American Histories

Wideman is one of the nation's literary treasures, and his contribution is a dazzling, delirious achievement: as his narrator, perched on edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, prepares for suicide, he delivers a cri de coeur that ranges from Sonny Rollins to the Yalu River and becomes nothing less than a meditation on the extraordinary resilience of ordinary black lives in the American Century — Junot Diaz Wideman can write . . . He can make the ordinary scene sing the blues like nobody's business * * New York Times * * Wideman . . . boldly subverts notions of what a short story can be in this wonderful collection . . . Each story feels new, challenging and exhilarating, beguilingly combining American history with personal history * * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * * Undoubtedly the foremost chronicler of the urban African-American experience. A master storyteller, Wideman is both a witness and a prophet — CARYL PHILLIPS Wideman's writing, like Toni Morrison's, is so pure and convincing that he can break the rules of classical storytelling, even invent some new ones * * Boston Globe * * A profound writer — RICHARD FORD Wideman astonishes us . . . insisting on our attention by the very daring of his prose and the authority with which he proceeds * * Philadelphia Inquirer * * A writer who belongs in our permanent library * * New York Times * * Wideman is at the top of his form . . . The brilliance of his language, the power of his storytelling and the sheer bravado and unexpectedness of his riffs exert considerable charms * * Washington Post * *