John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Widemanis an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 June 1941
CountryUnited States of America
basic born both carolina culture generation history individual particular represents second south
My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina - well, both grandfathers were born in the South.
trying women written
I have written about the women around me. My ancestors, my relatives, lovers. It was a way of trying to make it all make sense.
definite mean onions order reasonable sliced sort
I often want things to make definite statements. If I order onions sliced thinly on my hamburger, I don't want them to come out sort of medium. But that doesn't mean it's a reasonable desire, in all things.
family home
Home wasn't so much a house as people, family.
believe pass truth ways whoever
I feel compelled not to pass on a vision of bleakness, destruction or cynicism. I want to tell the truth as I see it, but I also have to believe that individuals - my kids, your kids, whoever - can do something about it, and I want to show the ways in which they can do something about it.
hard
I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.
children might lessons
One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.
powerful people trying
If Mumia Abu-Jamal has nothing important to say, why are so many powerful people trying to shut him up?
writing scary important
Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.
children wall kids
Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.
basketball dream air
When it's played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams.
book writing thinking
I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.
eye reality artist
A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.
dream fall enemy
Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.