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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
โA powerful assemblage of short stories exploring late-in-life angst through personal myth, cultural memory, and riffs on an empire scorched by its own hubrisโ (O, The Oprah Magazine) from award-winning author John Edgar Widemanโhis first collection in more than a decade. โRace 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 shiftingโ (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 โJB & FD,โ Wideman reimagines conversations between John Brown, the antislavery crusader, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and oratorโconversations that produce a fantastical, rich correspondence that spans years and ideologies. โMaps and Ledgersโ eavesdrops on a brother and sister today as they ponder their fatherโs killing of another man. โWilliamsburg Bridgeโ sits inside a man sitting on a bridge who contemplates his life before he decides to jump. โMy Deadโ is a story about how the already-departed demand more time, more space in the lives of those who survive them. American Histories is โan important addition to Widemanโs body of writing and a remarkable demonstration of his ability to address social issues through a range of fictional forms and stylesโ (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 bestโemotionally precise and intellectually stimulatingโan extraordinary collection by a master.
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