John Edgar Wideman, acclaimed since the early 1970s for his award-winning fiction and memoirs, has long been engaged in a project to redefine, from the perspective of an American of color, the wondrous and appalling power of his country’s literary culture and history. Now, curated by him, in this first-time collection from his extensive body of long-form journalism and biographical essays, readers are offered a chance to see and judge for themselves how Wideman has proven himself to be a luminous witness of America’s history.

For centuries, the buying and selling of human beings was legal, and millions of Africans were kidnapped and 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 LOOK FOR ME AND I'LL BE GONE, his sixth collection of stories, John Edgar Wideman imbues with energy and life the concerns that have consistently infused his fiction and nonfiction. How does it feel to grow up in America, a nation that encourages (sometimes unwittingly, but often on purpose) its citizens to see themselves as colored or white, as inferior or superior? The story “Separation” begins with a boy afraid to stand alone beside his grandfather’s coffin, then wends its way back and forth from Pittsburgh to ancient Sumer. “Atlanta Murders” starts with two chickens crossing a road and becomes a dark riff, contemplating “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” James Baldwin’s report on the 1979-1981 child murders in Atlanta, Georgia.

When John Edgar Wideman won the PEN Malamud Award in 2019, he joined a list of esteemed writers --- from Eudora Welty to George Saunders --- all of whom are acknowledged masters of the short story. Wideman’s commitment to short fiction has been lifelong, and here he gathers a representative selection from throughout his career, stories that challenge what defines, separates and unites us; dare to push form and defy convention; and, to quote Wideman, seek to “deconstruct the given formulas of African American culture and life.”