John Edgar Wideman

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John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941 in Washington, DC ) is an American writer . In 2011 he received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his life's work .

Life

Wideman grew up in the predominantly black neighborhood of Homewood in the eastern part of Pittsburgh until he and his family moved to the middle-class-dominated neighborhood of Shadyside at the age of 12. Many of his novels and short stories are set in the black Homewood district in the eastern part of the city. He is the second African American after Alain Locke to receive a Rhodes Scholarship , which enabled him to study at Oxford University in England, where he studied from 1963 to 1966 and studied 18th century English literature.

Wideman has received numerous awards during his writing career. Among other things, he is the first writer to win the PEN / Faulkner Award twice: 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday (1983) and 1991 for Philadelphia Fire (1990). In 1992 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , and in 1993 he was a MacArthur Fellow . He has been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 2005 and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2016 .

Wideman has taught literature at several universities: the University of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the University of Wyoming, Laramie, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a professor emeritus at Brown University (Asa Messer Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies and Literary Arts).

Wideman is married for the second time and has three children from his first marriage. His daughter Jamila played professional basketball in the newly created WNBA ( Women's National Basketball Association ). Wideman himself was a very successful player in college in the United States and England.

His brother Robert was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1978 for robbery and complicity in a murder, as was Wideman's younger son Jacob, who was convicted in 1988 for his murder committed two years earlier at the age of 16. Wideman has addressed the events of his brother in various novels and short stories, while he has remained silent on the case of his son at his request. In his most successful autobiographical book to date, Brothers and Keepers , Wideman deals with his relationship with his much younger brother Robert, whose fate contrasts so strongly with Wideman's successes.

Works (selection)

Novels

  • A Glance Away , 1967
  • Hurry Home , 1970
  • The Lynchers , 1973
  • Hiding Place , 1981
  • Sent for You Yesterday , 1983
  • Reuben , 1987
  • Philadelphia Fire , 1990
  • The Cattle Killing , Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1996
    • German translation: Schwarzes Blut , translated from English by Uda Strätling, Claassen, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-546-00183-0 and 3-546-00183-4
  • Two Cities , German sky under your feet , 1998
  • Fanon , 2008

Short stories

  • Damballah , 1981.
  • Fever , 1989.
  • The Stories of John Edgar Wideman , 1992.
  • God's Gym , 2005.

Memoirs and non-fiction books

  • Brothers and Keepers , Henry Holt, New York 1984; Allison & Busby, London 1985
    • German translation: Brother and Guardian , translated from English by Peter Bartelheimer, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984; Published as paperback by Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 978-3-518-38318-6
  • Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society , 1994.

Awards and honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article by Thomas Chatterton Williams, John Edgar Wideman Against The World , January 26, 2017, New York Times [1]
  2. ^ Member History: John Edgar Wideman. American Philosophical Society, accessed February 11, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  4. ^ Brown University website
personal data
SURNAME Wideman, John Edgar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wideman, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC