SOURCE: Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond. “‘How Would They Know?’: Conclusion.” In John Edgar Wideman: Reclaiming the African Personality, pp. 113-21. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Mbalia compares Wideman's earlier stories to his later ones.

Just as I had completed what I hoped to be the next to the last draft of this work, Wideman published his third collection of short stories, The Stories of John Edgar Wideman. I read the New York Times review of the collection before I bought it. In fact, it was the review which determined for me the necessity to include the collection in this work. For the review emphasized the beauty of the older, Homewood stories, implied in fact that the works included in the Homewood Trilogy were more lyrical and thus more powerful works of art than the more recent ones included in the new collection:

Many non-Homewood...