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Brothers and Keepers (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

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Brothers and Keepers demonstrates Wideman's complex personal, sociological, and artistic response to his brother Rob's life sentence for murder in 1978. In it he sees writ large the pathological interplay of white exploitation, racist neglect, and internal despair that have intensified, rather than lessened, in America's cities since the 1960's. Like the narrator of The Homewood Trilogy, Wideman presents himself with a bittersweet awareness that, in contrast to Rob, his lifelong efforts to straddle black and white cultural expectations have made him an incongruous figure...

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