On November 19, prolific author and literary figure John Edgar Wideman appeared at the 92nd Street Y (92NY)’s Unterberg Center for Literature to promote his new book, “Slaveroad.” Interviewed before a packed house by Princeton professor of African-American Studies, and author in his own right, Eddie Glaude (“Begin Again”), the MacArthur Fellow, one of the first three African Americans to ever earn a Rhodes Scholarship, and recipient of numerous honorary degrees and literary prizes, stood alone at the lectern for the first 15 minutes, reciting a new poem of his. Centering on the word “Black,” the piece explored how language is used to manipulate identity and perception, and the benefits and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in literature.
Over the course of the evening, the conversation between Glaude and Wideman traversed the concepts of social awareness, social change, Wideman’s challenging and often tragic personal history, AI, and of course, sports — Wideman’s love for competitive athletic events is legendary. In fact, Wideman went on something of a rant about the way football is presented on TV. “For every minute of football I get,” he groused, “I get three-quarters of a minute of something else. That’s not a really good payoff. I’d rather go take a walk.”
With the election not even a month behind us, the looming second term of Trump and changes to the sociopolitical and legal structure of the U.S. was the first subject tackled once Wideman took his seat on stage beside Glaude, who is also a frequent political contributor on the cable news network MSNBC. Invoking his children and grandchildren, Wideman said that he is “concerned” about the direction in which the country is going.
Referencing an essay collection he has been working on that encompasses writings of his over the past 50 years, he said, “I look back on some of these pieces that go way back to the 1970s, and they would be right on in this moment. My fears, my angers, the worst things I anticipated in some of those essays, are right in my face, in our country’s face, at this moment — plus 10, plus 100.”
Wideman further sounded alarm about post-election coverage that seemingly overlooked any discussion of what many Americans consider one of the most significant reasons for Trump’s imminent re-entry into the White House. “I watched 60 Minutes, I watched BBC News. I read various summaries of what happened, and neither mentioned white supremacy,” he said.
Widman and Glaude of course, also discussed “Slaveroad,” which Wideman dedicated to Neo-Expressionist painter Jean Michel Basqiat. It melds memoir, history, and fiction to interrogate the persistent traumatic impacts of slavery and white supremacy. The term itself is a metaphor for the route that brought Africans from West Africa to the Americas in the 15th through 19th centuries. It’s also a conceit that binds the histories of all those whose ancestors trod that route.
The book includes the too-little-known story of William Henry Sheppard, a missionary and one of the first collectors of African art. Wideman writes unflinchingly of his son’s infamous murder of a summer camp bunkmate and his subsequent incarceration, skillfully drawing a thruline between historical and contemporary figures.
Asked by Glaude about the role of the metaphoric slaveroad and current state of the world, Wideman doubled down on the concept of the dangers of denial. “Until we accept responsibility for living a certain kind of life that ignores our history, that ignores how we got here, that will do anything, that will call it a black hole … any of those explanations that don’t go to the meat of a person’s thinking and identify under their feet, the constituent problems, slavery being one, that brought us where we are … if that recognition is not made, there is only one direction we can go,” he said.
Examining other contemporary issues in world affairs, Wideman seemed to denounce violence or war as a solution, regardless of a problem’s intractability, promoting instead collective activism. “Some generation of young men and women has to say, ‘I love Ukraine, I love Gaza, I love Israel, but I’m not going to take a gun and go kill other people. You’ve got to give me another set of instructions.”