John Edgar Wideman was born on June 14, 1941, in Washington, D.C., but he spent the first 10 years of his life in Homewood, a poor African-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh. As a child, Wideman had two loves: basketball and storytelling. When he was 12, Wideman and his family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood, where Wideman attended a racially integrated high school.

Wideman was very successful throughout high school. He was a basketball star, senior class president, and valedictorian. During high school, Wideman pursued intellectual self-development, but he found the white-dominated world of academia to be incompatible with the African-American experience. Wideman tried to keep these two worlds separate to such an extent that he spent his free time with other African-American students but his class time with white students. Because of these actions, Wideman often felt isolated from his own community.

Wideman was awarded a basketball scholarship to...