John Edgar Wideman’s Writing to Save a Life : Only Connect
Family and racial history are the sap of John Wideman’s 21-volume corpus. Fatheralong’s subtitle, A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society offers a key to Wideman’s works, memoirs as well as fictions. Writing to Save a Life starts from memories of Emmett Till’s 1955 lynching and exoneratio...
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| Izdano u: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/babel, |
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| Glavni autor: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
| Izdano: |
Babel
2020
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| Online pristup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sažetak: | Family and racial history are the sap of John Wideman’s 21-volume corpus. Fatheralong’s subtitle, A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society offers a key to Wideman’s works, memoirs as well as fictions. Writing to Save a Life starts from memories of Emmett Till’s 1955 lynching and exoneration of the perpetrators ; then moves on to Louis Till’s execution (Emmett’s father) after a dubiously fair 1945 court martial trial in Italy. Writing to save a Life reopens the court martial file, pinpoints inconsistencies and offers a not unlikely version that fills in the blanks left by official army records. The book finds a peace of sorts, closing on a well known African American folk tale affirming the need to struggle against racial oppression : puny bees resist Brother Bear’s greed. |
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