Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society

By John Edgar Wideman

Book Overview

The reissued classic from "master of language" (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman--a "superb" (New York Times Book Review) memoir in five essays about fathers, and Wideman's vexed relationship with his own.

An essential chronicler of Black American experience for over half a century, John Edgar Wideman has been hailed as one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. In Fatheralong, finalist for the 1994 National Book Award, Wideman examines the tidal pull of the narratives and scripts around the sometimes challenging father-son relationship. This searing work is an elegiac mirror to Brothers and Keepers, his landmark memoir about the divergent paths between he and his brother Robby, and the knotted, unbreakable cord of blood, love, and guilt that binds them together. In Fatheralong, we return to Homewood, the Pittsburgh neighborhood in which the two brothers were raised, but here, Wideman takes us even further back into the past, to the generations of Wideman fathers that preceded him. Tracing the contours of his family's story back to a South Carolinian hamlet called Promised Land, and the trip there he took with his own estranged father, and then back into the present, in his own role as the father of his three children, Fatheralong exposes the hope and fatalism, wisdom and despair, that underwrites all lineage and all ancestry--the strange and universal condition of having come from someone.

In Fatheralong, we see Wideman at his most "earnest, artful, hopeful, angry, and proud" (Kirkus Review), as he imagines on the page, "how different we might be if we really listened to our fathers' stories." A classic text by a formidable writer, ready for a new generation of readers.

• Format: Audio CD
• Language: English
• ISBN: 166810167X
• ISBN13: 9781668101674
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Customer Reviews

A poetic, thoughtful, confrontational and heartfelt book

I am astounded by how many of the present reviews here state that this book dwells too long on race. They seem to miss the point. It is all about race and how that is interpreted within American society. Race as it relates to power, power of white over black. Its history continues to have huge resonance within the society to this day. Fatheralong dwells on the impact of racism felt within the fabric of African American families - particularly focusing on how it translates from father to son. A subject that is not happy or pretty, but is conveyed in a poetic, thoughtful, confrontational and heartfelt way. Nothing will change unless people grapple with the enormous fallout of racism. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the dynamics of racism.

Read this book

Being a South African i see the effects that the ideology of race has had every day. Yet Fatheralong took my breath away and left me feeling very sad and ashamed but not without hope for the future. Widemans' use of prose is both eloquent and angry, which is also reflected in the structure of the novel. Short bursts of anger are alternated with more lengthy contemplative passages. The flow in prose (and the lack of distinction between him and his father) creates the impression that now, once Wideman is a father himself, he and his father have become one. The seperation that once existed is now erased and the bond between father and son can be mended. But race is not the only issue that gets tackled here. Like Susan Faludi, Wideman is also talking about a generation of men who had fathers who weren't so much absent as silent.

This book makes you look deep down in yourself.

When you look past the curse words, and incomplete sentences this book makes a little since. Wideman's book makes you look deep down into your soul, and makes you discover that you are a little raciest. The book also reinforces how important a strong family unit can be in the development of a person. In this time, when people are searching for the causes of why our society has so many problems this book brings answers. 412587