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
hard
I don't make that hard and fast distinction between political and nonpolitical writing. I write about what bothers me.
african aunt came church episcopal family folk historian information members methodist older stories
My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.
business facts finding history itself therefore truth understand version
In Haiti, as I understand it, storytelling and history itself are not a business of necessarily elucidating facts or the truth of an incident, but finding the version that is most entertaining and therefore will get retold and live in immortality.
brought historical liked romantic whatever
My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.
aware beginning gauge knowledge life respect
All my life, I've been very aware of my body. I have always used it as a gauge of things. When I look at a person, and I see their body, that's the beginning of knowledge about them. Furthermore, I respect the body.
listen music time
I wish I had time to listen to music more.
family home
Home wasn't so much a house as people, family.
change less
Real change is always violent, but it may hurt a lot less than what's in place before the violence occurs.
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.
liked sports stories
I always liked to write and had fun writing, but I didn't have any pretensions about being a writer. I liked to read and liked to putz around and write little stories or poems, but my thing was sports.
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I don't understand why black people have been so quiescent, so passive over the hundreds of years of American history. Why hasn't there been more violence, more armed struggle? I know answers to some of that, but it seems to me it's an issue of faith, an abiding faith in some sort of great beyond, or great spirit, or even in the American dream.
dream fall enemy
Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.
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.
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.