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Library | Material Type | Item Barcode | Shelf Number | Location |
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Searching... Fairfield Area Library | Book | 38674118712460 | BIO TILL EMMETT WIDEMAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... North Park Library | Book | 38674116443894 | BIO TILL LOUIS WIDEMAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Tuckahoe Library | Book | 38674116443902 | BIO TILL LOUIS WIDEMAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Twin Hickory Library | Book | 38674130254012 | BIO TILL LOUIS WIDEMAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Twin Hickory Library | Book | 38674116443886 | BIO TILL LOUIS WIDEMAN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A major literary figure tells "a searching tale of loss, recovery, and déja vu that is part memoir and what-if speculation, part polemic and exposé" ( The Washington Post ) about two generations of one family--civil rights martyr Emmett Till and his father, Louis--shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Emmett Till took a train from his home in Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi; a few weeks later he returned home dead. Murdered because he was a colored boy and had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till, chose to display her son's brutalized face in a glass-topped casket, "so the world can see what they did to my baby."
Emmett Till's murder and his mother's refusal to allow his story to be forgotten have become American legends. But one darkly significant twist in the Till legend is rarely mentioned: Louis Till, Emmett's father, Mamie's husband, a soldier during World War II, was executed in Italy for committing rape and murder.
In 1955, when he and Emmett were each only fourteen years old, Wideman saw a horrific photograph of dead Emmett's battered face. Decades later, upon discovering that Louis Till had been court-martialed and hanged, he was impelled to investigate the tragically intertwined fates of father and son. Writing to Save a Life is "part exploration and part meditation, a searching account of [Wideman's] attempt to learn more about the short life of Louis Till" ( The New York Times Book Review ) and shine light on the truths that have remained in darkness.
Wideman, the author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers , "is a master of quiet meditation...and his book is remarkable for its insight and power" ( SFGate ). An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is essential and "impressive" ( Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ) reading--an engaging, enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The present illuminates the pastbut cant provide resolutionin this generation-spanning meditation on injustice.Wideman (Gods 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 Tills father in the trial have largely disappeared from the publics 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 soldiers turning informant to escape prosecution and on shaky testimony from Italian women. Even after Emmitts 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 Tills father in hand, the Mississippi grand jury declined to indictfor 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 boys 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 movements genealogy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) The Times columnist offers a readable and cohesive explanation of the forces upending our world. THE UNDOING PROJECT: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $28.95.) The psychologists who overturned economists' belief in rational man. WRITING TO SAVE A LIFE: The Louis Till File, by John Edgar Wideman. (Scribner, $25.) An investigation of the execution of Emmett Till's father by the United States military during World War II. A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, by Steven Hahn. (Viking, $35.) Hahn's challenging new history presents the United States as an imperialistic nation from the start. THE PURSUIT OF POWER: Europe 1815-1914, by Richard J. Evans. (Viking, $40.) Evans's sweeping account traces complex, interconnected forces - political, economic and cultural - at work. BEFORE MORNING, by Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Beth Krommes. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17.99; ages 4 to 7.) A child wishes for a blizzard to keep her mother at home in this book-length poem. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MRS. SHARMA, by Ratika Kapur. (Bloomsbury, paper, $16.) A middle-class Delhi woman takes a lover and reflects on her life in this novel of a changing India. IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, by Edward Hoagland. (Arcade, $22.99.) A man copes with diminished vision in Hoagland's emotionally complex novel. JUANA AND LUCAS, written and illustrated by Juana Medina. (Candlewick, $14.99; ages 5 to 8.) A vivid novel about a Colombian girl who learns English. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books.
Library Journal Review
Novelist Wideman turns to an underexamined figure in the historic and heartbreaking story of Emmett Till: Till's father, who was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 after being found guilty of murder and rape. (LJ 10/15/16) © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.