Tracie Church Guzzio
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030048
- eISBN:
- 9781617030055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030048.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter shows how the Ibo saying “all stories are true” suggest a way of reading Wideman’s chronicle of his family and the history of the community and the race. The statement and its appearance ...
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This chapter shows how the Ibo saying “all stories are true” suggest a way of reading Wideman’s chronicle of his family and the history of the community and the race. The statement and its appearance in his canon direct readers to a meditation on history itself, the nature of storytelling, and the dialogue between cultural discourses. This can also be extended into a consideration of Wideman’s style and how it reflects his content. His “palimpsestic” storytelling can be seen through the intratextual and intertextual interaction of multiple perspectives, narrators, versions of stories, and discourse modes. This allows Wideman to engage both the European and African traditions in his narratives as dialogic and contrapuntal texts.Less
This chapter shows how the Ibo saying “all stories are true” suggest a way of reading Wideman’s chronicle of his family and the history of the community and the race. The statement and its appearance in his canon direct readers to a meditation on history itself, the nature of storytelling, and the dialogue between cultural discourses. This can also be extended into a consideration of Wideman’s style and how it reflects his content. His “palimpsestic” storytelling can be seen through the intratextual and intertextual interaction of multiple perspectives, narrators, versions of stories, and discourse modes. This allows Wideman to engage both the European and African traditions in his narratives as dialogic and contrapuntal texts.
