American Histories

In his latest collection, master storyteller John Edgar Wideman offers a collection of complex, charged pieces. His stories weave together historical fact, imagined conversation, philosophical kernels and deeply personal vignettes. A reimagined conversation takes place between white anti-slavery crusader John Brown and black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. A man sits on the edge of Williamsburg Bridge, contemplating suicide. The author considers the death of his brother, uncle, mother, and sister's daughter. All of the stories are spellbinding reflections on abolitionists and artists, fathers and sons, the bonds of family and the pull of memory. Wideman's fiction challenges the boundaries of the form. As a whole, American Histories amounts to more than the sum of its parts, an extended meditation on family, history and loss. Emotionally precise and intellectually stimulating, this is Wideman at his best.