The island, Martinique / John Edgar Wideman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wideman, John Edgar

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

National Geographic directions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wideman, John Edgar.

Travel.

Martinique--Description and travel.

Martinique.

Wideman, John Edgar--Travel--Martinique.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxx, 167 pages : map ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, [2003]

Summary:

Rhodes Scholar, MacArthur Fellow, the first writer ever to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, John Edgar Wideman is a novelist whose brilliant, impressionistic work transcends race even as it draws power from his African-American heritage. Shaped by the violence and sorrow of the black experience in the Western Hemisphere and suffused with a smoldering rage, his vision is darkly disturbing but clear-eyed and complex. Of the many piercing insights that fill this remarkable book, perhaps the most paradoxical is this: of all colors, none has more shadings than black. Wideman launches his exploration of the French West Indian island of Martinique with a deeply personal journal of his romance with a Frenchwoman. He records a multicultural collision that takes place on many levels. As a black man in a place built on slavery, he shares a bond forged in suffering, yet as an American and a tourist he is an outsider, drawn to the island's tropical beauty. And as an empowered black man traveling with a lover who is both French and white, he is a living challenge in a culture exquisitely attuned to the nuances of race. It is a volatile mix of ingredients, and Wideman turns it into a book that is part travelogue, part polemic, and part fever dream, where a lovely, arresting image on one page gives way on the next to a fiercely detailed indictment of centuries of cruelty whose effects are still felt. The Island: Martinique is a travel memoir unlike any you have ever read, edgy, defiant, and demanding -- at once a vivid portrait of Martinique and its dark yet fascinating history, and a searingly honest, unforgettable exploration of John Edgar Wideman's own inner world.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Journal 1

Chapter 2 Pere Labat 101

Chapter 3 Fanon 115

Chapter 4 The Island 147.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Other Format:

Online version: Wideman, John Edgar. Island, Martinique.

ISBN:

0792265335

9780792265337

OCLC:

50866808

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description