Wideman, John Edgar

"In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman, the acclaimed author of Writing to Save a Life, 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"--.

Interrelated stories spanning a century and set in Homewood, a community founded on Pittsburgh's east end by a runaway slave.

After a police bombing kills eleven people in an Afrocentric cult named Move, Cudjoe, a writer and former exile, now seeks a boy seen running from the fire in his old neighborhood.

The author examines his brother's life in comparison to his own and asks himself why they are so different, one a college professor, one sentenced to life imprisonment.

A memoir in which the author tells how he discovered basketball as a boy living in Pittsburgh, and discusses the significance of the game to his life and the lives of other African-Americans.

A childhood memoir of an African American's experiences playing basketball and the effects it had on his life.