BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coleman, James W. Blackness and Modernism: The
Literary Career of John Edgar Wideman. Jackson:
University of Mississippi Press, 1989.
Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond. John Edgar Wideman:
Reclaiming the African Personality. Selinsgrove:
Susquehanna University Press, 1995.
O’Brien, John. Interviews with Black Writers. New
York: Liveright, 1973.
Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with John Edgar
Wideman.” Callaloo 13, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 47–
60.
Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. “Fraternal Blues: John Edgar
Wideman’s Homewood Trilogy.” Contemporary
Literature 32, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 312–345.
Samuels, Wilfred D. “Going Home: An Interview with
John Edgar Wideman.” Callaloo 6, no. 1 (February
1983): 40–59.
TuSmith, Bonnie, ed. Conversations with John Edgar
Wideman. Jackson: University Press of Missis-
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Wideman, John E. Brothers and Keepers. New York:
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———. Hoop Roots: Basketball, Race and Love. Bos-
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Wilfred D. Samuels
Williams, John Alfred (1925– )
Although born in segregated Hinds County, Mis-
sissippi, Williams grew up in Syracuse, New York’s
multiethnic Fifteenth Ward, where Jews, blacks,
Italians, Irish, Poles, Indians, and others, as he
fondly recalls in his autobiographical odyssey, This
Is My Country Too, “shared conversation and other
small joys” and “the religious holidays of all were
greatly respected.” In 1943 William disrupted his
high school education to join the navy; he served
in the Pacific during World War II. In the navy, he
became disillusioned by the racism he encoun-
tered. Receiving an honorable discharge in 1946,
Williams returned to Syracuse, completed high
school, married, fathered two sons, and enrolled
at Syracuse University, where, in 1950, he com-
pleted his B.A. degree in journalism and English.
Although he sought to pursue a graduate degree
in English immediately, family responsibilities de-
manded that he work full time. He returned to the
foundry where he previously worked, but a back
injury forced him to leave it for employment in
various occupations, including as a life insurance
salesman and a staff worker for CBS and NBC TV.
Williams is best known for his novel The Man
Who Cried I Am (1967); however, he began writing
poetry while in the Pacific and later was a freelance
journalist writing for and publishing in such pres-
tigious black newspapers and magazines as The
Chicago Defender, Jet, and Ebony. In 1963 he trav-
eled across the United States on a two-article as-
signment for Holiday magazine, and the following
year he traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and
the United States for Newsweek. These personal
experiences greatly influenced Williams’s writing,
including This Is My Country Too, which is an ex-
pansion of the Holiday assignment. He draws on
his experiences as a civil rights activist and jour-
nalist for Newsweek for Africa: Her History, Lands
and People (1963) and The King God Did Not Save
(1970), a comprehensive indictment of the histori-
cal distortions of the life and death of MARTIN LU-
THER KING, JR.
In The Man Who Cried I Am, Williams, ground-
ing his protagonist’s quest for meaning in funda-
mental existentialist tenets, explores issues related
to existence, much in the manner that RICHARD
WRIGHT does in The Outsider. Williams’s protago-
nist, Max Reddick, is, like the author, a journalist
and novelist. In the process of reflecting on his his-
torical and racial identity before he dies (he is suf-
fering from rectal cancer), Max must come to grips
with what he has learned in 30 years of working
and traveling about being black in 20th century
America. While attending a funeral in Paris, Max
gains access to the King Alfred Plan, which details
the American government’s plan to commit geno-
cide against black Americans rather than grant
them full citizenship. Despite the implied pessi-
mism and bleakness of the novel, The Man Who
Cried I Am is not a protest novel of the tradition
associated with Wright. Max, realizing his condi-
tion, must act to give meaning to his existence;
a failure to be responsible for his own existence
would be to act falsely and in bad faith.552 Williams, John Alfred