Series: Canons

As John Wideman was building a reputation as one of our finest writers, his brother Robby went from the streets of Philadelphia to a life sentence in prison for murder. As it weighs their shared bonds of blood, tenderness, and guilt, Brothers and Keepers yields an unsparing analysis of America's racial contract.

Writing to Save a Life

by John Edgar Wideman

Published 15 November 2016

When Emmett Till was murdered aged fourteen for allegedly whistling at a white woman, photographs of his destroyed face became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. A decade earlier Emmett's father, Louis, had also been killed - court-martialled and hanged. Though the circumstances could hardly have been more different, behind both deaths stood the same crime, of being black.

In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman, born the same year as Emmett Till, investigates the tragic fates of father and son. Mixing research, memoir and imagination, this book is an essential commentary on racism in America - illuminating, humane and profound.

The Philadelphia Fire

by John Edgar Wideman

Published 1 September 1990

Eleven people - five of them children - are killed in west Philadelphia when 6221 Osage Avenue is bombed out of existence. One small boy is seen to escape the fire. From his life of self-exile on an island in the Aegean, Cudjoe mourns the child until it becomes an obsession, leading him home, forcing him to face up to his own profound alienation and to the wrenching realities of his native land. He searches for the boy and, as he does so, he searches out his own past. Reconstructing his life plunges him backwards into memories both personal and communal, forwards inch by inch into a city fast becoming a nightmare. 'Wideman's novel succeeds through raw emotion and a linguistic versatility...Written in a sinewy language which also combines reportage, "Philadelphia Fire" operates as parable and social document' - "Irish Times". '"Philadelphia Fire" is a welter of fine writing, sociological observation, polemical address and messianic prophecy...A literary novel in the grand contemporary, postmodern, literary style' - "New Statesman & Society". 'Unquestionably the foremost chronicler of the urban African-American experience.
A master storyteller, Wideman is both a witness and a prophet' - Caryl Phillips.