SOURCE: Raynaud, Claudine. “‘Mask to Mask. The ‘Real’ Joke’: Surfiction/Autofiction, or the Tale of the Purloined Watermelon.” Callaloo 22, no. 3 (summer 1999): 695-712.

In the following essay, Raynaud explores the relationship between writing, creative imagination, and reality in Wideman's “Surfiction” as well as the story's link to Charles Chesnutt's short story “A Deep Sleeper.”

I think it was Geral I first heard call a watermelon a letter from home. After all these years I understand a little better what she meant. She was saying the melon is a letter addressed to us. A story for us from down home. Down home being everywhere we have never been, the rural South, the old days, slavery, Africa. That juicy striped message with red meat and seeds, which always looked like roaches to me was blackness as cross and celebration, a history we could taste and chew. And it was meant for...