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, … 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.
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Nothing but a difficult to decipher essay. I had decided to purchase based on reviews that promised serious research, it would be very difficult to separate any research material from the multitude of opinions, much less be able to evaluate the facts. Gave up after 10%.
This book introduces more questions than answers. It gives the prodginy of the subject generation a more realistic evaluation of the possibility for them of realizing an “American Dream”.
I enjoyed this book and felt like I got to know the author. The subject matter was tragic. I just wish that there had been more meat to the story.
I really enjoyed this book. Both my parents were WWII vets as were all my in laws, I feel like we grew up in a different time. This book delved into so many different areas.
In his long awaited new book, Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman tells the largely forgotten story of Louis Till, a man of color who suffered a miscarriage of racial justice a full decade before the infamous lynching of his son Emmett. Wideman pens a powerful blend of fact and fiction, riffing on concerns and themes that he has explored for a half century now in his highly distinguished body of prose. These pages represent a wise and wonderful achievement, both timely and timeless.
John Edgar Wideman’s Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File excavates the forgotten prequel to a brutal chapter in the ongoing history of American racial injustice. Wideman examines a particular narrative—the way a father’s death was exhumed to justify his son’s murderers going free — in order to question the terms of narrative itself, refusing to mistake silence for significance, absence for presence, or history for truth. I read this provocative and surprising book in the wake of the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and it felt utterly essential. I was grateful for Wideman’s nimble intellect, his commitment to nuance, and his insistence that we pay attention to the brutalities perpetrated under the guise of justice.
Unclassifiable and harrowing. The path through ‘the very specific American darkness that disconnects colored fathers from sons’ is found and lost and found again through prose that jumps and shimmers, punches and croons. This is one of those books virtually impossible to write… yet it has been written. And by a great American writer.
The story is powerful, I like how it was presented. Good job writer! If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on N0velStar, just submit your story to [email protected] or [email protected]
The author seems determined to sabotage a great story in these pages. There is much that is important to be known inexpertly hidden in this funhouse of a book. The story of Louis Till, estranged father of his tragically famous son, deserves to be told. Instead, Wiseman conjures supposed scenarios and interjects memories of his own that fully obfuscate the story. Louis Till may have committed the crimes he hung for (his colleagues attested so under oath), but there is a reasonable chance he didn’t. That is the story that should be told, not the conglomeration of conjecture and fantasy the author cobbles together here. The Till family memory deserves better than this.
Historical information about Emmett Till’s father. i will bet you have never read this information about Louis Till.