Slaveroad
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- ¥1,800
発行者による作品情報
“Master of language” (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational position to explore what he calls the “slaveroad,” offering “a fresh perspective of slavery’s impact and a confirmation of Wideman’s exalted status in American letters” (New York magazine).
John Edgar Wideman’s Slaveroad is a groundbreaking work of “bruising candor and obsessive originality” (The Wall Street Journal). For centuries, the buying and selling of human beings was legal, and millions of Africans were kidnapped then forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to serve as slaves. The enduring legacies of this slave road traffic—denied, unacknowledged, misunderstood, repressed—continue to poison the experiences and journeys of all Americans.
In a section of “Slaveroad,” called “Sheppard,” William Henry Sheppard, a descendant of enslaved Virginians, travels back to Africa where he works as a missionary, converting Africans to Christianity alongside his Southern white colleague. Wideman imagines drinking afternoon tea with Lucy Gant Sheppard, William’s wife, who was on her own slaveroad, as she experienced her husband’s adultery with the African women he was trying to convert. In “Penn Station,” Wideman’s brother, after being confined forty-four years in prison, travels from Pittsburgh to New York. As Wideman awaits his brother, he asks, “How will I distinguish my brother from the dead. Dead passengers on the slaveroad.”
“A blend of memoir, fiction, history” (The Millions), Slaveroad is a book that will inform, challenge, and surprise Wideman fans as well as newcomers to his writing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wideman (Look for Me and I'll Be Gone) meditates on the enduring effects of slavery in this heartfelt collection of sketches about historical figures and personal stories centered on his brother's release from prison. In "Who Is Sheppard," the narrator, a stand-in for Wideman, reflects on William Henry Sheppard, a Black Presbyterian missionary who traveled from the U.S. to Africa in the late 1800s, imagining Sheppard's attempt to fathom the number of bodies like his that crossed the ocean in the other direction on the "slaveroad." "Who Is Rebekah" portrays Moravian missionary Rebekah Protten, who ministers to enslaved people on a plantation on St. Thomas. In "Staring," Wideman looks back on his teaching career, focusing on the regret he feels for failing to connect with a Black student who went on to become a successful poet ("Neither of us chose to reveal much suffering to the other"). "Penn Station" recounts Wideman's reunion with his brother, newly released from prison: "arms wrapped around my brother's body, how easy it had been to forget forty-four years." Though the digressive prose stalls in places, there are gems of wisdom sprinkled throughout: "Anyway, writing, like all art, is doomed to fail, isn't it?" Wideman writes in "Joe Wood," a story about a promising Black writer who disappeared during a hiking trip in 1999. Despite some rough patches, Wideman's probing mind shines through.
