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Author: John Edgar Wideman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2002-11
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9780618257751
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, love, and race, this book tells of the author's love for a game he can no longer play.
Author: Noah Cohan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2019-07-01
Total Pages: 276
ISBN-13: 1496216199
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSports fandom—often more than religious, political, or regional affiliation—determines how millions of Americans define themselves. In We Average Unbeautiful Watchers, Noah Cohan examines contemporary sports culture to show how mass-mediated athletics are in fact richly textured narrative entertainments rather than merely competitive displays. While it may seem that sports narratives are “written” by athletes and journalists, Cohan demonstrates that fans are not passive consumers but rather function as readers and writers who appropriate those narratives and generate their own stories in building their sense of identity. Critically reading stories of sports fans’ self-definition across genres, from the novel and the memoir to the film and the blog post, We Average Unbeautiful Watchers recovers sports games as sites where fan-authors theorize interpretation, historicity, and narrative itself. Fan stories demonstrate how unscripted sporting entertainments function as identity-building narratives—which, in turn, enhances our understanding of the way we incorporate a broad range of texts into our own life stories. Building on the work of sports historians, theorists of fan behavior, and critics of American literature, Cohan shows that humanistic methods are urgently needed for developing nuanced critical conversations about athletics. Sports take shape as stories, and it is scholars in the humanities who can best identify how they do so—and why that matters for American culture more broadly.
Author: Bonnie TuSmith
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9781572334694
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This volume is an indispensable study of Wideman's oeuvre, covering the full range of his career by addressing the key features of his fiction and nonfiction from 1967 to the present.The essays in this book reflect the most advanced thinking on Wideman's prolific, extraordinary art. The collection features at least one article on each major work and includes the voices of both well-established and emerging scholars. Though their critical perspectives are diverse, the contributors place Wideman squarely at the center of contemporary African American literature as an exemplar of postmodern approaches to literary art. Several position Wideman within the context of his predecessors-Wright, Baldwin, Ellison-and within a larger cultural context of music and collective history. The essays examine Wideman's complex style and his blending of African and Western cosmologies and aesthetics, the use of personal narrative, and his imaginative revisioning of forgotten historical events. These insightful analyses cover virtually every stage of Wideman's career and every genre in which he has written. A detailed bibliography of Wideman's work is also included"--From Amazon.co.
Author: Amy Bass
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2005-08-20
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 9781403965707
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTalking about race and sports almost always leads to trouble. Rush Limbaugh's stint as an NFL commentator came to an abrupt end when he made off-handed comments about black quarterback Donovan McNabb. Cincinnati Reds' owner Marge Schott and CBS commentator Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder also landed in hot water for public remarks that most people construed as racist. Ask a simple question along these lines--"Why do African Americans dominate the NBA?"--and watch the sparks fly. It is precisely this flashpoint that Amy Bass seeks to explore. Sports wield a tremendous amount of cultural power in the United States and around the world, and often influence our ideas about race. In the Game is a collection of essays by top thinkers on race that survey this treacherous terrain. They engage topics like boxer Joe Louis's iconic status during the Jim Crow era, how blacks shaped the NFL in the 1970s, American Indian sports team mascots, and soccer in Argentina.
Author: Keith E. Byerman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2013-08-27
Total Pages: 206
ISBN-13: 0313366349
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChallenging. Successful. Controversial. All terms used to accurately describe African American novelist and autobiographer John Edgar Wideman. This book examines his life and work—and the connections between them. The Life and Work of John Edgar Wideman is ideal for readers who might not be familiar with Wideman's work or those who may have been intimidated by descriptions of his writings. Through its coverage of Wideman's life from several generations back to the present and explanations of how Wideman makes use of life experiences, this book breaks down barriers for new readers and enables them to better relate and connect to his writing. Author Keith E. Byerman discusses Wideman's book-length works of fiction and nonfiction, as well as some of his shorter, journalistic pieces. The book emphasizes how Wideman integrates family and personal experience into what is typically labeled postmodern writing, and explains how he has evolved as a public intellectual who supplies shrewd commentary on subjects such as the prison system, terrorism, and the role of sports in American society.
Author: James W. Coleman
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2010-12-10
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 0807147273
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne of the most critically acclaimed yet least recognized contemporary writers, African American author John Edgar Wideman creates work often described as difficult, even unfathomable. In Writing Blackness, James Coleman examines Wideman's prolific body of work with the goal of making his often elusive imagery and dense style more accessible and thus broadening his readership. More so than for most writers, Coleman shows, Wideman's life has affected his writing. Born in 1941, Wideman grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb where he attended an integrated high school, starred on the basketball team, and was senior class president and valedictorian. At the University of Pennsylvania he studied creative writing and became an all--Ivy League basketball player. Winning a Rhodes scholarship, he studied at Oxford, after which he returned to Penn and became its first black tenured professor. Wideman published his first novel, A Glance Away, at age twenty-six and by 1973 had published two more works of fiction. But for all this success, something began to wear on him. In 1973, his grandmother died, and after listening to family stories when he traveled home for the funeral, Wideman began to change his world view. Between 1973 and 1981 Wideman published nothing and immersed himself in African American culture, reading widely and -- even more important -- moving much closer to his family. Since 1981, Wideman has refocused his life and writing on blackness and published twelve experimental works, all very different from his earlier books. Coleman examines nearly all of Wideman's work, from A Glance Away (1967) to Fanon (2008). He shows how Wideman has developed a unique style that combines elements of fiction, biography, memoir, history, legend, folklore, waking life, and dream in innovative ways in an effort to grasp the meaning of blackness -- an effort that makes his writing challenging but that holds more than ample rewards for the perceptive reader. In Writing Blackness, Coleman demonstrates why Wideman ranks among the best of contemporary American writers.
Author: Jonathan D’Amore
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2012-06-08
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 0230390684
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book explores the conflicted relationship writers have with their public image, particularly when they have written about their personal lives. D'Amore analyzes the autobiographical works of Norman Mailer, John Edgar Wideman, and Dave Eggers in light of theories of authorship, autobiography, and celebrity.
Author: Heather Russell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 217
ISBN-13: 0820328677
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Haiti, Papa Legba is the spirit whose permission must be sought to communicate with the spirit world. He stands at and for the crossroads of language, interpretation, and form and is considered to be like the voice of a god. In Legba’s Crossing, Heather Russell examines how writers from the United States and the anglophone Caribbean challenge conventional Western narratives through innovative use, disruption, and reconfiguration of form. Russell’s in-depth analysis of the work of James Weldon Johnson, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, Earl Lovelace, and John Edgar Wideman is framed in light of the West African aesthetic principle of àshe, a quality ascribed to art that transcends the prescribed boundaries of form. Àshe is linked to the characteristics of improvisation and flexibility that are central to jazz and other art forms. Russell argues that African Atlantic writers self-consciously and self-reflexively manipulate dominant forms that prescribe a certain trajectory of, for example, enlightenment, civilization, or progress. She connects this seemingly postmodern meta-analysis to much older West African philosophy and its African Atlantic iterations, which she calls “the Legba Principle.”
Author: Sarah L. Law
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 128
ISBN-13: 1467122335
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNamed for the famous early-19th-century Point Breeze Hotel that stood at the corner of what is now Fifth and Penn Avenues, Point Breeze has been home to some of the wealthiest families in Pittsburgh and the country. Moguls such as Carnegie, Westinghouse, Frick, Mellon, and Thaw all resided in Point Breeze, thus christened "Pittsburgh's Most Opulent Neighborhood." H.J. Heinz owned the first car in Pittsburgh, which was garaged at his estate in North Point Breeze, and present-day Wilkins Avenue was originally the private road to the 650-acre estate of senator, ambassador to Russia, and judge William Wilkins. However, many of these prestigious estates were later razed and divided to become smaller residential lots, driving the real estate market to create more homes to accommodate 20th-century families. In later years, the Point Breeze neighborhood became the home of several well-known authors, including Annie Dillard, Albert French, and David McCullough, as well as professional athletes Willie Stargell of the Pirates and L.C. Greenwood of the Steelers and everyone's favorite neighbor, Mr. Rogers.
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 2001-09
Total Pages: 80
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Crisis, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color. For nearly 100 years, The Crisis has been the magazine of opinion and thought leaders, decision makers, peacemakers and justice seekers. It has chronicled, informed, educated, entertained and, in many instances, set the economic, political and social agenda for our nation and its multi-ethnic citizens.
