After reading John Wideman’s essay, “Our Time”, I felt that his perspective was one that was
conflicted by past emotions and torn between two opposing worlds. He came from a bad, povertystricken community called Homewood. This was a place that resembles what is now LA, or Detroit, or
St. Louis. A place where the law or death are the only two things that have a hold on people living there.
I believe that through Wideman’s essay he is telling about a place, he escaped, but is still a prisoner to
some degree because he grew up there. I feel that this impacts much of Wideman’s life and mostly all
of his writing as an adult and scholar. Although a renowned writer and professor he comes from a town
where morals and righteousness, or even confidence, is nowhere to be found. It is another type of dark
world for people like Wideman, and it causes those who are involved great stress and anxiety in
anticipation and longing of finding something more meaningful. I believe that Wideman is telling us the
story and trying to connect his own experience, to that of many African Americans living today in
extremely unfair situations that they feel are out of their control.
While growing up, this writer dealt with life and death, and saw more than his share of crime,
drugs and violence. He was brought up in a community where things weren’t positive even half the
time, and the “white” country he was living in wasn’t concerned with helping anyone from his
community unless they wanted to make it out. In his own words, he says of Homewood:
“their world is the GHETTO and in that world all the glamour, all the praise and attention is given
to the slick guy, the gangster especially, the ones that get over in the “life”. And it’s because we can’t
help but feel some satisfaction seeing a brother, a black man, get over on these people, on their system
without playing by their rules. No matter how much we have incorporated these rules as our own, we
know that they were forced on us by people who did not have our best interests at heart.”
(Bartholomae 657).
Due to these circumstances, Wideman was forced to make a choice either to embrace the emptiness of
the ghetto and accept the hold that it had on his community, or to excel at his studies and scholastic
achievements in order for a chance to get out. He relied on his interests in basketball and track as well
as his brightness as a student in order to give himself an opportunity at a better life. He stayed away
from the influence of the streets and shunned his brother Robby who he saw, countless times, causing
pain and anguish to his mom and relatives as a way to uphold his “street image”. Much of this
interaction with Robby was bitter, and hidden away for many years as Wideman tried to distance
himself from his past as best he could. He didn’t visit his brother much in jail at all and wasn’t there for
him when it really counted. Only once he decided he needed to write a book about it was he able to get
the courage to come and listen to his brothers’ story. As the reader discovers multiple times, Wideman
struggles to hear exactly what his brother is saying, as he always wants to fill in parts of the story so he
can make them up for himself and come to terms with the part he played in abandoning his brother.
Along with this rocky relationship and need to distance himself from the “street life”, there was the
relationships that Wideman had with other members of his family and community. It is vital for
someone reading his work to know how each character in his life played a significant role that shaped
him into who he is and what he has wrote about the entirety of his professional career. He clearly
makes mention of the fact that he does a sub-par job at balances his professional life with his personal
life, and that most often they become intertwined. I believe that in addition to this, Wideman’s
experiences as a young child seeing death and despair as well as viewing others as “helpless” really
drove the point home for him to get out while he still had the chance. He made distinctions early on
that he didn’t see himself as part of this hopeless, shadowy community of people. He felt that this
despair wasn’t something he wanted to be around, and the drinking, anger and violence wasn’t all he
was meant for or what he deserved.
One of the stories that Wideman references early in his essay is the one where his brother
Robby’s friend, Garth, was misdiagnosed by the “white” doctors and died a slow painful death as a
result. In this particular story, Wideman describes how much Robby loved his friend Garth and how
angry everyone was that he wasn’t given the respect or the treatment when it mattered the most. He
had been diagnosed with jaundice and given weak medicine instead of a full treatment, which is what he
needed. According to Wideman, everyone believed that he had something in his gut and was dying due
to a liver or other internal organ failure that wasn’t being taken care of. He was still smoking and
drinking and wasn’t taking care of his body for obvious reasons like not enough access to health care or
information about his affliction.
Whatever the reasons, Wideman focuses not particularly on Garth’s death, but on his funeral and
reactions of the other members of the community during this time of morning. Instead of celebrating
the good that Garth brought into peoples’ lives, they focused on the bad and the hatefulness of what
had happened. They reacted with more sadness and utter despair and talked of the evil “white doctor”
who let him die. The members of his family and other “people”, as Wideman describes them, fill the
family’s project home with drugs and heavy hits from the whiskey bottles. It is obvious that they are
trying to numb themselves.
“Anyway, the whiskey started flowing in that little project apartment.. old people reminiscing
about funerals they’d attended, about all the friends and relatives they’d escorted to the edge of Jordan,
old folks sipping good whiskey and moaning and groaning till it seemed a sin to be left behind on this
side of the river after so many saints has crossed over.” (Bartholomae 661).
In this scene after the funeral and eulogy “the people” are drowning their pain away from their
project homes and empty lives, and telling lies to themselves so that things can make sense, when
honestly there is nothing to be learned in this dark state of mind. The family is in shambles and
everyone in the community is not doing anything positive to turn Garth’s death into an important
lesson. They, in Wideman’s view, as so consumed by their own hatred and betrayal of a system that has
been in place long before they were even alive, that Garth’s death almost is meaningless.
Although Garth died and wasn’t properly taken care of in the way that a sick child should be, the
community is perpetuation their struggle by giving into it and allowing it to consume them when they
should be celebrating the life of another. Wideman makes it apparent that Garth is just like any other
dead black, who was taken too soon and their legacy will soon be forgotten because no one in the
community has the ability to see anything from a different perspective or understand the deeper
meaning behind a loved one being taken.
“Garth was gone. In a few day people would stop talking about him.l He was in the ground.
Stone-cold dead…Now the ground had closed over Garth and what did it mean? Here one day and gone
the next and that was that. They’d bury somebody else out of Gaines tomorrow. People would dress up
and cry and get drunk and tell lies and next day it’d be somebody else’s turn to die. Which one of these
shadows in this black room would go first? What did it matter? Who cared? Who would remember their
names; they were ghosts already. Dead as Garth already. Only difference was, Garth didn’t have it to
worry about no more.” (Bartholomae 662).
After reading this essay I have a new understanding for what African American writers are trying
to do. They aren’t out to just inform the reader about the situations they had to face or the awful
experiences that made them hate the white man. They are telling a story so that others in their
community can realize how they are perpetuating their grief and sadness. These writers were able to
make it out of the ghetto and see it for what it really is. They don’t hold the white man as accountable
as they hold each member of their community for choosing to live a life they aren’t happy with and not
get themselves out. I feel that this is the bigger picture of what writers, like Wideman, are trying to do.
It is their attempt at forgiveness for themselves, and helps them come to terms with why they left their
home in the first place. It’s a call to action for anyone of color who is living in this state of mind and
wants change and knows that there is a much better life out there for them as long as they can be
motivated enough to get to it.
Works cited:
Bartholomae, David, Anthony Petrosky. Ways of Reading An Anthology for Writers. 9th.
Boston MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. Wideman John Edgar. Our Time. p.
658-694.