John Edgar Wideman - Brothers and keepers: A Memoir

Books by

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN

American Histories

Writing to Save a Life

Briefs

Gods Gym

The Island: Martinique

Hoop Roots

Two Cities: A Love Story

The Cattle Killing

Fatheralong

The Stories of John Edgar Wideman

Philadelphia Fire

Fever

Reuben

Brothers and Keepers

Sent for You Yesterday

Hiding Place

Damballah

The Lynchers

Hurry Home

A Glance Away

Scribner

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Copyright 1984 by John Edgar Wideman

Preface copyright 2005 by John Edgar Wideman

Foreword letter copyright 2020 by Mitchell S. Jackson

Foreword letter copyright 2020 by Reginald Dwayne Betts

Afterword copyright 2020 by Robert Wideman

Originally published in 1984 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston

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First Scribner trade paperback edition October 2020

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Interior design by A. Kathryn Barrett

Cover design by David Litman

Cover photos: Hand by Zarul Sukri / Eyeem / Getty Images; Texture by Ekely / Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-4875-1

ISBN 978-1-9821-4876-8 (ebook)

To Bette Wideman

Whose love, whose sweet dream of freedom

blesses all her children

Dear John, Dear Robby,

We never met, Robby, so itd be lame for me to pretend that I know you. However, what I can say with the utmost confidence is I feel kindred to you, OG. What I can say with sheer assurance is I know whats it like to refuse living in the mans shadows, even if that defiance places you smack between the mans jagged-ass wolf teeth. And because of this, what I see in you, despite what those uninitiated in life might fail to see, is a lions heart, is beaucoup courage.

Call it courage, call it genius, call it abandon, insouciance, foolishness, resilience, persistence, strength, some unknowable algebra of all of those facets factored by variables including temperament, talent, skills. Or maybe we could distill it to the question most of the brothers Ive knownand I suspect many of the ones youve known as wellmust answer for ourselves: how do we flourish in a world that seems owned by others, others whove been bent on our oppression if not our downright destruction? Among the many gifts of the book are the occasions it addresses that question. And I counted plenty times. Believe you me, I felt straight-up joy and a genuine sense of pride reading about your teenage rabble-rousing, the description of you up there on that auditorium stage delivering a Black Poweresque screed to school officials.

In what was supposed to be my halcyon youngbuckhood, I used to post on a dark street with a tied-off sandwich baggie pebbled with crack. We called the enterprise curb serving. It was a crucible for sure, but for far too many of us it was a rite of passage. That experience is one of the reasons why your musings on the curb echoed somewhere deep in me. That curb, as you attest, has held perennial appeal for us: The worlds a stone bitch. Nothing true if thats not true, you said. The man had you coming and going. He owned everything worth owning and all youd ever get was what he didnt want anymore, what hed chewed and spit out and left in gutters for niggers to fight over If we ever make it, it got to come from there, from the curb. Another of the great treasures of the book is how it reminds us that whether its your big bro earning a Rhodes scholarship or legendary Ivy League box scores or a Genius grant; that whether its you effecting efficacious high school militancy or turning a package from the local kingpin into a plenitude of scratch or earning an associate degree with a life sentence sitting on your chest, its almost all the curb. When you get down to it, our lives are made of so much hard rock. And since theymeaning the man, meaning the keepersdont intend for us to ascend to the peaks of their mountaintops, us brothers must all become miners, must hammer and chop and chisel away until we reap a life of dignity.

Dignified.

Thats a word Id used to describe you, John. Its in your physicality for sure. You can see it in your carriage when you stride into a room or sit all regal postured in a chair, can hear it in the measured tone of your voice, can sense it in the brief but eternal pause you take before offering an interlocutor (for instance, me) the boon of your wisdom. And, of course, for more decades than Ive been alive, its been in what you write. For example, you musing on a time when white boy challenged you in college and you couldve, maybe even shouldve went upside his head: to maintain any semblance of dignity and confidence I had to learn to construct a shell around myself. Be cool. Work on appearing dignified, confident. Fool people with appearances, surfaces, live my real life underground in a region where no one could touch me. Several things about that passage struck me. For one, it testified to prime self-awareness. For two, it affirmed my belief that, on occasions or often, we must convince ourselves of who we want to be, must manufacture confidence where it hence hasnt existed, and also that there are moments when we need to live our interior lives discreet from a world hungry, hungry to turn us inside out and seize upon our weak parts. For three (and yeah, Ill stop counting), it was your willingness not just to reflect but to subject yourself to critique, to disassemble for readers. Here you were, a man of great accomplishment, willing to reveal the unflattering sides of yourself, attesting that thered been prices paid for the ways in which youd navigated the world. And that candor, John, was something I recognized as crucial.

Forreal, forreal, forreal us brothers got to keep it a buck with each other or else weve got much less of a chance to thrive.

Of course, you risk disassemblage elsewhere, too, maybe no time more memorable than when Robby confesses to stealing your TV and you admit to the reader that you reaped insurance money for the loss and also a replacement TV from your father-in-law, about how both facts speak low of your character. On Robbys confession and your own, you write, My memories need his. Maybe the fact that we recall different things is crucial. Maybe they are foreground and background propping each other up.

OGs, your collaboration has propped me up many a time over the years. Its remarkable because its an intimate and knowing critique not just of the justice system but of the structural forces that lead people into the system and because, as well, it subtly questions whether we need prisons at all. The book is phenomenal for the careful portrayal of family bonds, in particular of brotherhood, and inclusive of friendship. Its exceptional not just for its content, though, but also its high style. For the way you handle time, John, how it mirrors the patterns of memory, which of course, arent beholden to the forward march of seconds, minutes, years. Plus, the voices you crafted, no lie, are as indelible as any Ive ever read. Masterful, how you render Robbys hipness, exuberance, aplomb. And how at points you distinguish his voice from your confident, patient, erudite interior monologues. And add to all that, the way in which you demand a readers attention by eschewing obvious signposts for shifts in POV, how at some point his voice bleeds into yours and vice versa, background and foreground becoming one.