In this vital and inspiring volume, John Edgar Wideman has brought together the first truly representative sampling of literature by African-American writers in the early centuries of our history. Reaching across periods, styles, and regional borders, Wideman has selected twelve works of genius–some of them celebrated literary icons, others neglected or forgotten masterpieces– and reprinted them in their entirety. The result is a book as thrilling in its passion as it is vast in scope. Though these selections come from a range of genres (verse, memoir, historical, and personal narrative), they are all, fundamentally, stories of strength and survival. Frederick Douglass’s frank narrative of escape from slavery and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s classic verse take their place beside lesser-known works like Nat Love’s stirring account of life as a black cowboy, Ida B. Wells’s haunting descriptions of lynchings, and the crisp, compelling adventures of Olaudah Equiano. Wideman prefaces each selection with an illuminating biographical essay. The fruit of a lifetime’s devotion to the best American writing, My Soul Has Grown Deep will stand as an enduring monument to the depth and beauty of African-American literature.
Author
A widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal. In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award. His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction. He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
