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Major literary figure and "master of language" (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational perspective to explore what he calls the "slaveroad," a daunting, haunting reality that runs throughout American history.
John Edgar Wideman's "slaveroad" is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds, and persists.
In a section of "Slaveroad," called "Sheppard," William Henry Sheppard, a descendant of enslaved Virginians, travels back to Africa where he works as a missionary, converting Africans to Christianity alongside his Southern white colleague. Wideman imagines drinking afternoon tea with Lucy Gant Sheppard, William's wife, who was on her own slaveroad, as she experienced her husband's adultery with the African women he was trying to convert. In "Penn Station," Wideman's brother, after being confined forty-four years in prison, travels from Pittsburgh to New York. As Wideman awaits his brother, he asks, "How will I distinguish my brother from the dead. Dead passengers on the slaveroad."
An impassioned, searching work, Slaveroad is one man's reckoning with a uniquely American lineage and the ways that the past haunts the present: "It's here. Now. Where we are. What we are. A story compounded of stories told, retold, untold, not told."
"Less a memoir than a passionate prose poem." —Kirkus Reviews
"Despite some rough patches, Wideman's probing mind shines through." —Publishers Weekly
"Long heralded as one of literature's preeminent voices, John Edgar Wideman has faithfully chronicled the experiences of African Americans for almost 60 years. His work is singular; it defies categorization while inviting readers to engage with familiar ideas in startlingly new ways. His latest blends memoir, fiction, and history to describe what he calls the 'slaveroad,' a psychological and geographical artery that extends from Africa to the Global North; from the 16th century to the present day; and from his own family's travails to a wider consideration of the African American experience. This book offers a fresh perspective of slavery's impact and a confirmation of Wideman's exalted status in American letters." —New York Magazine
"Part autofiction, part history and part memoir, this book is an alchemy of genres. Wideman meditates on the word 'slaveroad' as a metaphor—both temporal and corporeal—to examine its various meanings and its connection to the trans-Atlantic slave trade." —The New York Times
This information about Slaveroad was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Geoffrey A. Landis
John Edgar Wideman's books include American Histories, Writing to Save a Life, Philadelphia Fire, Brothers and Keepers, Fatheralong, Hoop Dreams, and Sent for You Yesterday. He is a MacArthur Fellow, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award. He divides his time between New York and France.
Name Pronunciation
John Edgar Wideman: WIDE-mehn. Second syllable is pronounced as names ending in "man" typically are.
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