Brothers and Keepers

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John Edgar Wideman. Brothers and Keepers

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John Edgar Wideman’s books include Writing to Save a Life, Philadelphia Fire, American Histories, Fatheralong, Hoop Roots and Sent for You Yesterday. He is a MacArthur Fellow and has won the PEN/Faulkner Award twice and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award. In 2017, he won the Prix Femina Étranger for Writing to Save a Life. He divides his time between New York and France.

Fanon: A Novel

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Laughing now to keep from crying when I think back to those days.

My first year at college when I was living in the dorms a white boy asked me if I liked the blues. Since I figured I was the blues I answered, Yeah, sure. We were in Darryl Dawson’s room. Darryl and I comprised approximately one-third of the total number of black males in our class. About ten of the seventeen hundred men and women who entered the University of Pennsylvania as freshmen in 1959 were black. After a period of wariness and fencing, mutual embarrassment and resisting the inevitable, I’d buddied up with Darryl, even though he’d attended Putney Prep School in Vermont and spoke with an accent I considered phony. Since the fat white boy in work shirt, motorcycle boots, and dirty jeans was in Darryl’s room, I figured maybe the guy was alright in spite of the fact he asked dumb questions. I’d gotten used to answering or ignoring plenty of those in two months on campus. “Yeah, sure,” should have closed the topic but the white boy wasn’t finished. He said he had a big collection of blues records and that I ought to come by his room sometime with Darryl and dig, man.

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