Jordan Hayhow
ENGL2089
Intermediate Composition
Wideman Project Week 2
Our Time by John Edgar Wideman depicts the life that he led and it tells the
stories of the people in his life. John talked about what he dealt with losing Garth, his
mom and their hometown, and it also tells Robby’s story from his point of view. For this
paper, I will be retelling his story about his neighborhood, Homewood and how
community is the center of who we are.
I grew up in a small town called Homewood, where mom was raised also. She
was raised in the old Homewood, where people were close knit and trust was a common
thing. Manners were a second nature when mom was growing up; things changed for us.
The times changed when I got older, fear became second nature in my town. Racial
discrimination was a thing these days and times go scary; people were dying. I don’t
understand when things started to change. My small community turned in to a community
of fear. I can’t walk outside without worrying about the white folks being scared of me or
have a fear of something going wrong and going to jail. I had to watch my brother go to
jail and watch my mom fall apart. There’s nothing I can do, though, to make my small
town whole again and mom refuses to admit that there’s a problem. I understand that she
doesn’t want to watch her town fall apart like she watched her son fall apart, but times are
changing and we need to accept it.
I think Wideman writing about Homewood is the basis of Robby story; it’s where
it all starts. Just as Homewood starting the feel the pressure of the outside communities,
Robby’s troubles were getting worse and Wideman’s mom couldn’t deny that everything
was changing around her. “My mother realized her personal unhappiness and grief were
inseparable from what was happening out there.” (435). As I read these passages, it
becomes clear that everything that Wideman write, about his mom and his brother, all
lead back to Homewood. His mom was suffering watching her son get in to trouble and
go to jail while also watching her beloved community fall apart due to fear and crime. As
his mom watched crime bring down her son, she also watched it bring down Homewood.
The way we grow up in the town we do is what shapes who we are. If Wideman
didn’t grow up in the town he did and watch that town take a complete turn, he wouldn’t
be the man he is today and wouldn’t have written all that he had. Homewood had an
impact on him, just like any community has an impact on the people that live there.
People that grow up in the country are completely different than people that grow up in
the city because of where and how they grew up. Every community in the world is
different and have different values; shaping who we are. “Both a person’s self-identity
and accountability were firmly established.” (434). You develop who you are and who
you want to be in a community. Your personal identity is built in the community you
grew up in. If your family grows in a small town and raised you in a small town, most of
the time you want to do the same thing. Your family just wants the best for you and they
want to show you that they are raising you in this community because it shaped them and
made them who they are. You didn’t become who you are today without growing up
where you did.
Homewood shaped Wideman in to who he is and helped him see the world how
he does, just like any community does. Wideman didn’t want to see the bad; he wanted to
ignore all the negativity. When you grow up in a small community, you want it to stay
the same way it always has because that community made you who you are today. I grew
up in the suburbs of the west side of Cincinnati. There are catholic schools everywhere,
which is where I attended 12 years of school. Growing up middle class in the suburbs
with a Catholic education definitely shaped who I am today. Just like in Wideman’s
community, everyone seems to know who you are and it’s not always a good thing. It’s
hard to ignore the negativity and hard to watch bad things start coming closer to home. I
can put myself in his shoes when he talks about his hometown; which I think was a goal
of his. Every writer wants to reach their audience on an emotional level and bring them in
to the story they are telling and Wideman did just that when he talked about his
hometown and the emotion he put in to his writing. Wideman wrote this story for people
to read and really feel what he went through. When you read about what someone else
went through, it’s hard to put yourself in his or her shoes. In order to really feel what the
writer is trying to depict, you need to feel the emotion in their words. As someone reads
the story, they can really feel what Wideman was trying to say and what he wanted the
audience to feel.
While reading the story and writing this paper, it sort of hit home in the end when
I had to really think about community as a whole and the people in it. There’s a saying in
Cincinnati: “People who grew up on the west side, never leave the west side”. That
saying went through my head a lot as I wrote this paper because I feel like it’s sort of the
same with Wideman and his community. We all grow up somewhere and sometimes we
have to watch our community grow through trouble, but it shapes us in to who we are and
a lot of the times we stay where we are. I am a west sider who wants to move away; start
fresh. But will I actually do it? It’s easier to talk about leaving the place you grew up in
than it is to actually do it. I applaud Wideman for staying in his community for as long as
he did; but it made him a great writer with a great story.
Work Cited
Wideman, John Edgar. "Our Time." Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers.
David Bartholomae, Anthony Petrosky, and Stacey Waite. Bedford/St. Martin's
2014. 422-59. Print.