SOURCE: Birkerts, Sven. “The Art of Memory.” The New Republic 207 (13 July 1992): 42-9.

In the following review, Birkerts asserts that Wideman is America's leading African American male writer and provides a thematic overview of his short stories.

Success comes in different ways to different writers. Some may crash their way through with a big first book, and then spend years, even decades, trying to fulfill the promise. Others appear, disappear, and later come stumbling back. Then there are those who stoke a slow and steady fire, waiting for readers and critics to catch up with them. This has been John Edgar Wideman's way—though of course these things don't happen by design. To a large degree they just happen. The writer writes, publishes, and hopes that readers will buy what he has to sell.

Wideman, the author now of seven novels, three collections of stories, and Brothers and Keepers...