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    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence"
    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence"
    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence"
    Ebook40 pages30 minutes

    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535842709
    A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for John Edgar Wideman's "What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence" - Gale

      1

      What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence

      John Edgar Wideman

      2003

      Introduction

      What We Cannot Speak About We Must Pass Over in Silence by John Edgar Wideman was first published in the December 2003 issue of Harper's. It is also available in a collection of Wideman's stories, God's Gym (2005). This disturbing story features an anonymous black, middle-aged male narrator who becomes obsessed by the imprisoned son of a dead friend. He spends much time struggling with prison bureaucracy in order to track the man down to a prison in the Arizona desert. The story, which is told in a stream-of-consciousness style, reflects Wideman's concerns about the high levels of incarceration of African American men (as of 2006, Wideman's younger brother and son were serving life sentences). Themes include the dehumanizing nature of the prison system, the political and economic division between the races, and the social isolation and fear felt by many African Americans. Also emphasized are the broader human difficulties of gaining reliable knowledge and of forming connections with, and knowledge of, other people in a society characterized by disconnection, fragmentation, and mechanization.

      Author Biography

      The African American writer John Edgar Wideman was born on June 14, 1941, in Washington, D.C., the eldest of five children of Edgar and Bette Wide-man. The family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was later to set much of his fiction (especially in the Homewood ghetto). He attended Peabody High School, excelling in his studies and being made captain of the basketball team. He won a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he began to study psychology but soon changed to English, graduating in 1963. During his undergraduate career, Wideman made the Big Five Basketball Hall of Fame, won the university's creative writing prize, and earned membership of Phi Beta Kappa. He received a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University in England, becoming only the second African American to receive such recognition. He gained a B.Phil. in eighteenth-century literature from Oxford's New College in 1966.

      After returning to the United States, Wideman began writing and teaching at such institutions as the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wyoming. His first novel, A Glance Away, was published in 1967. The story of a day in the life of a drug addict, the novel reflects Wideman's experiences during his youth in Homewood. Wideman soon gained critical acclaim for his use of an erudite and experimental literary style to describe ghetto experiences. His

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