Writing to Save a Life

August 22, 2016
Of 96 servicemen executed by the U.S. military during World War II, 83 were African-American—one of whom was Louis Till, hanged on July 2, 1945, for rape and murder. He was the father of 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in 1955. Louis’s confidential military service record was made available to serve the defense of Emmett’s murderers. In establishing the junction between these two deaths, Wideman (Brothers and Keepers) employs a montage of multiple narrative voices, some first person, some through an omniscient author; “I assume,” he writes, “the risk of allowing my fiction to enter people’s true stories.” Loosely moored by his diligent pursuit of relevant documents, his reportage and recollection alternate and merge with hypothetical encounters with Emmett’s mother and Wideman’s own father, an account of a family Thanksgiving dinner, excerpts of trial records, memories of Wideman’s first girlfriend, and
mentions of Wideman’s son, who is imprisoned for murder. An overriding theme connects it all: the way that America’s criminal justice system
historically and currently harms African-Americans. “Whether or not Till breaks the law,” Wideman argues, “his existence is viewed by the law as a problem.” Wideman’s experimental narrative ultimately leaves the reader adrift, though aware that a valuable record is buried in there somewhere.

September 15, 2016
The present illuminates the past--but can't provide resolution--in this generation-spanning meditation on injustice.Wideman (God's Gym, 2005, etc.) initially conducted his research to inform some fiction focusing on Emmitt Till, the 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped and murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. "Though today Emmett Till is generally viewed as a civil rights martyr," writes the renowned author, "the shabby trial that exonerated his killers, and the crucial role played by Till's father in the trial have largely disappeared from the public's imagination." It is the life and death of father Louis Till that obsesses Wideman, in a manner that blurs the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. During World War II, Louis was executed for rape and murder in Italy, a case based on another black soldier's turning informant to escape prosecution and on shaky testimony from Italian women. Even after Emmitt's accused murderers were acquitted, there had been the opportunity to try them on the charge of kidnapping, until a supposedly confidential file on the hanging of Louis became public knowledge: "With this information about Emmitt Till's father in hand, the Mississippi grand jury declined to indict...for kidnapping." There are many layers of meaning in this book, especially regarding the identification of Wideman with Emmitt, both of them 14 when the author saw a photo of the dead boy's battered face, and the narrative expands into a meditation on black fathers and sons, the divide and the bonds, the genetic inheritance within a racist society. The author also explores the relationship between truth and fiction, since he believes the case against Louis can be read as fiction, and he composes his own fictions to counter it. He suggests that Louis was mainly guilty "of being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time" while admitting that he has no more proof than military officials did. A book seething with the passion and sense of outrage behind the Black Lives Matter movement that also traces specific roots of the movement's genealogy.

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June 1, 2016
Ten years before the brutal 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Emmett's father was executed by the U.S. Army for rape and murder, with details mostly kept from his family. Here, Wideman twins the lives of father and son to present a larger story of family tragedy and American racial history. National Book Award finalist Wideman's first nonfiction in 15 years.

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