SHORT STORIES FOR STUDENTS


Book Description




Brothers and Keepers


Book Description

“A rare triumph” (The New York Times Book Review), this powerful memoir about the divergent paths taken by two brothers is a classic work from one of the greatest figures in American literature: a reflection on John Edgar Wideman’s family and his brother’s incarceration—a classic that is as relevant now as when originally published in 1984. A “brave and brilliant” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, the classic John Edgar Wideman memoir, Brothers and Keepers, is a haunting portrait of two brothers—one an award-winning writer, the other a fugitive wanted for a robbery that resulted in a murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother, Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system. A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, affection, and guilt that connect Wideman and his brother and measures the distance that lies between them. “If you care at all about brotherhood and dignity…this is a must-read book” (The Denver Post). With a new afterword by his brother Robert Wideman, recently released after more than fifty years in prison.




Philadelphia Fire


Book Description

One of John Wideman’s most ambitious and celebrated works, the lyrical masterpiece and PEN/Faulkner winner inspired by the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia row house owned by black liberation group Move. In 1985, police bombed a West Philadelphia row house owned by the Afrocentric cult known as Move, killing eleven people and starting a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the heart of Philadelphia Fire is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and who becomes obsessed with the search for a lone survivor of the event: a young boy seen running from the flames. Award-winning author John Edgar Wideman brings these events and their repercussions to shocking life in this seminal novel. “Reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” (Time) and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, Philadelphia Fire is a masterful, culturally significant work that takes on a major historical event and takes us on a brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America.




All Stories are True


Book Description

Set mainly in the Pittsburgh district of Homewood, these 10 stories depict African Americans from all walks of life--ancestors, family, and lovers caught in the vortex of American history and haunted by their own particular demons. "(Wideman is) one of our very finest writers, period".--New Republic.




The Cattle Killing


Book Description

A surrealistic novel on the black experience. The action is in the form of vignettes and ranges from cattle killing by the Xhosa in Africa, believing this will drive the whites away, to a black bishop in Philadelphia taking his flock out of the white man's church.




Unbearable Splendor


Book Description

Praise for Sun Yung Shin: Finalist for the Believer Poetry Award "[her] work reads like redactions, offering fragments to be explored, investigated and interrogated, making her reader equal partner in the creation of meaning."—Star Tribune Sun Yung Shin moves ideas—of identity (Korean, American, adoptee, mother, Catholic, Buddhist) and interest (mythology, science fiction, Sophocles)— around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be at home. What is a cyborg but a hybrid creature of excess? A thing that exceeds the sum of its parts. A thing that has extended its powers, enhanced, even superpowered.




You Made Me Love You


Book Description

Fifty-seven short stories drawn from past collections celebrate the lifelong significance of this major American writer's essential contribution to a form--illuminating the ways that he has made it his own.




Sent for You Yesterday


Book Description

Lucy and Carl struggle to prevent the extinction of the Black community of Homewood and to keep alive the musical heritage of the blues piano player, Albert Wilkes.




Ways of Reading Words and Images


Book Description

Adapting the methods of the much admired and extremely successful composition anthology Ways of Reading, this brief reader offers eight substantial essays about visual culture (illustrated with evocative photographs) along with demanding and innovative apparatus that engages students in conversations about the power of images.