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Scribner
April 2019
On Sale: March 26, 2019
192 pages
ISBN: 1501178350
EAN: 9781501178351
Kindle: B074ZTMPKC
Trade Size / e-Book (reprint)
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Fiction Family Life
“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 Wideman—his 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 orator—conversations 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 best—emotionally precise
and intellectually stimulating—an extraordinary collection
by a master.
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