You made me love you Selected stories, 1981-2018

Spanning three decades and showcasing 35 stories from venerated Wideman's accomplished career, this stunning collection is a testament to ingenious storytelling. Through vividly portrayed voices, evocative settings, and expansive themes, these tales put Wideman's talent for exploring the indelible connections that unite generations on full display. Beginning with selections from Damballah (1981), the first book in the author's now classic Homewood trilogy, the collection opens a door into the compelling inner lives of unforgettable characters. From the start, the reader understands what Walton Muyumba writes in his elegant introduction about the author's desires for "both close connections between his life and his works, and the ambiguities that literary writing can create." Whether presenting, in "Fever," a collage of voices from persons both real and fictional during the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia; relating a brief, tragic story in the precisely titled "Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies;" or imagining a conversation between Frederick Douglass and John Brown in "JB & FD," the stories throughout are exemplary examples of how Wideman's works are able to endure, to transcend time and place, and to resonate. This is an essential collection for both readers familiar with Wideman's oeuvre and those just discovering this modern master.

This career-spanning collection of work by Wideman (Brother's Keeper), with a revelatory foreword by critic and scholar Walton Muyumba, offers a stunning showcase of Wideman's range. In stories selected from 1981's Damballah up through 2018's American Histories, Wideman conveys a mastery of gritty realism, freewheeling blues, erudite autofiction, and African American mysticism, often grounded in a semi-fictional version of the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, the historically Black neighborhood where Wideman grew up. "Solitary" chronicles a mother's daylong ordeal to visit her son in prison, while in "Daddy Garbage," an iceball vendor's dog is hell-bent on eating from garbage cans: "Strayhorn knew it was less holding on to puppy ways than it was stone craziness, craziness age nor nothing else ever going to change." Wideman shines brightest in pieces that tunnel through history or the narrator's consciousness as they build to their reveals, such as "Maps and Ledgers," in which a writing professor ruminates on stories such as that of an ancestor who escaped from slavery. Muyumba convincingly encourages close reading of "Damballah," about an unnamed enslaved boy who honors the severed head of a man punished for practicing West African rituals: "listen to the head," Muyumba writes. If there were any doubts Wideman belongs to the American canon, this puts them to bed. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency. (April)