Title:	All Stories Are True
Other Titles:	History, Myth, and Trauma in the Work of John Edgar Wideman
Authors:	Tracie Church, Guzzio
Keywords:	Wideman, John Edgar—Criticism and interpretation
Issue Date:	2010
Publisher:	Mississippi
Description:	I remember the first moment that I was introduced to the work of John Edgar Wideman. At the time, I worked as a bookstore clerk. While shelving books—a task I usually enjoyed because it afforded me the chance to read in the back of the store—I grabbed a book that did not belong in the same corner of the store as the rest of the stack in my hands. I looked at its cover—the photograph of a shadowy figure in a jail cell. Reading the blurbs on the back, I was struck by the paradox stated in the book’s summary: one brother was a writer and a professor; the other brother was in jail for life. Why this fascinated me I don’t think I realized at the time. Perhaps I gravitated toward the book because of some need to investigate my own close but problematic relationship with a stepbrother often in trouble. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t leave the book alone. I returned to it over a period of several weeks, stealing time to read passages. It became a touchstone for me, though I couldn’t have articulated why at the time; it wasn’t until a few years later, when I experienced the loss of my own stepbrother, John, that I finally addressed some of the issues that led me to that book.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/9660
ISBN:	978-1-61703- 005-5
Appears in Collections:	African Studies

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