Slaveroad: An Autobiography

Summary

“Master of language” (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational position to explore what he calls the “slaveroad,” offering “a fresh perspective of slavery’s impact and a confirmation of Wideman’s exalted status in American letters” (New York magazine).

John Edgar Wideman’s Slaveroad is a groundbreaking work of “bruising candor and obsessive originality” (The Wall Street Journal). For centuries, the buying and selling of human beings was legal, and millions of Africans were kidnapped then forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to serve as slaves. The enduring legacies of this slave road traffic—denied, unacknowledged, misunderstood, repressed—continue to poison the experiences and journeys of all Americans.

In a section of “Slaveroad,” called “Sheppard,” William Henry Sheppard, a descendant of enslaved Virginians, travels back to Africa where he works as a missionary, converting Africans to Christianity alongside his Southern white colleague. Wideman imagines drinking afternoon tea with Lucy Gant Sheppard, William’s wife, who was on her own slaveroad, as she experienced her husband’s adultery with the African women he was trying to convert. In “Penn Station,” Wideman’s brother, after being confined forty-four years in prison, travels from Pittsburgh to New York. As Wideman awaits his brother, he asks, “How will I distinguish my brother from the dead. Dead passengers on the slaveroad.”

“A blend of memoir, fiction, history” (The Millions), Slaveroad is a book that will inform, challenge, and surprise Wideman fans as well as newcomers to his writing.