Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Wideman, John Edgar - Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (essay date Fall 1991)

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Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (essay date Fall 1991)

SOURCE: "Fraternal Blues: John Edgar Wideman's Homewood Trilogy," in Contemporary Literature, Vol. XXXII, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 312-45.

[Rushdy is an educator and the author of The Empty Garden: The Subject of Late Milton (1992). In the following essay, he discusses the significance of the narrator gaining his "blues voice" in the Homewood trilogy.]

      What can purge my heart
      Of the song
      And the sadness?
      What can purge my heart
      But the song
      Of the sadness?
      What can purge my heart
      Of the sadness
      Of the song?
 
      —Langston Hughes, "Song for Billie Holiday"

In Brothers and Keepers, John Edgar Wideman contemplates the difficulty of representing the Other without reducing the representation to just...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. James W. Coleman (essay date March 1985)
   2. Jacqueline Berben (essay date Fall 1985)
   3. John Bennion (essay date Spring/Summer 1986)
   4. Gary Dretzka (review date 29 November 1987)
   5. Harold Jaffe (review date March-April 1988)
   6. Matthew Wilson (essay date March 1990)
   7. John Edgar Wideman with Charles H. Rowell (interview date Winter 1990)
   8. Jacqueline Berben (essay date April-June 1991)
   9. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy (essay date Fall 1991)
   10. Jan Clausen (essay date Spring 1992)
   11. Michael Gorra (review date June 14 1992)
   12. Sven Birkerts (review date 13 and 20 July 1992)
   13. John Edgar Wideman with Jessica L. Lustig (interview date Fall 1992)
   14. James Robert Saunders (essay date December 1992)
   15. Mel Watkins (review date 13 November 1994)
   16. Mark Shechner (review date March/April 1995)
   17. Sanford Pinsker (review date Spring 1995)
   18. Paul West (review date 29 September 1996)
   19. Gene Seymour (review date 28 October 1996)
   20. Sven Birkerts (review date 3 November 1996)
   21. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 27 March 1997)
   22. Michael Wood (review date 27 November 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright