Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she examines how Wideman presents themes of racism and equality in "Fever."

John Edgar Wideman's life could read as any of the dramatic, brooding novels and short stories that he has produced over the course of his long, successful career. Raised in a predominately African-Ameri-can neighborhood in Pittsburgh, he nonetheless moved with fluidity in both the black and the white worlds. His talent at basketball led to a scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he proved himself a brilliant and diligent student. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1963, which brought him international attention because he was only the second African American to do so. Also that year, he was the subject of a magazine article in Look entitled "The...