Scribner
April 2019
On Sale: March 26, 2019
192 pages ISBN: 1501178350 EAN: 9781501178351 Kindle: B074ZTMPKC Trade Size / e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List
βA powerful assemblage of short stories exploring late-in-life angst through personal myth, cultural memory, and riffs on an empire scorched by its own hubrisβ (O, The Oprah Magazine) from award-winning author John Edgar Widemanβhis first collection in more than a decade.
βRace 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 shiftingβ (TheBoston 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 βJB & FD,β Wideman reimagines conversations between John Brown, the antislavery crusader, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and oratorβconversations that produce a fantastical, rich correspondence that spans years and ideologies. βMaps and Ledgersβ eavesdrops on a brother and sister today as they ponder their fatherβs killing of another man. βWilliamsburg Bridgeβ sits inside a man sitting on a bridge who contemplates his life before he decides to jump. βMy Deadβ is a story about how the already-departed demand more time, more space in the lives of those who survive them.
American Histories is βan important addition to Widemanβs body of writing and a remarkable demonstration of his ability to address social issues through a range of fictional forms and stylesβ (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 bestβemotionally precise and intellectually stimulatingβan extraordinary collection by a master.
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