From Library Journal
This short story collection and novel, respectively, both published in 1981, are the second and third volumes in the author's Homewood trilogy. Damballah contains a dozen stories spanning many years in a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. Hiding Place shares the same setting.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"A novelist of high seriousness and dept . . . enormous care and intelligence."


Review
"A novelist of high seriousness and dept . . . enormous care and intelligence."


Book Description
This collection of interrelated stories spans the history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. With stunning lyricism, Wideman sings of "dead children in garbage cans, of gospel and basketball, of lost gods and dead fathers" (John Leonard). It is a celebration of people who, in the face of crisis, uphold one another--with grace, courage, and dignity.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This collection of interrelated stories spans the history of Homewood, a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. With stunning lyricism, Wideman sings of "dead children in garbage cans, of gospel and basketball, of lost gods and dead fathers" (John Leonard). It is a celebration of people who, in the face of crisis, uphold one another--with grace, courage, and dignity.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

This short story collection and novel, respectively, both published in 1981, are the second and third volumes in the author's Homewood trilogy. Damballah contains a dozen stories spanning many years in a Pittsburgh community founded by a runaway slave. Hiding Place shares the same setting.

Sacred Fire

John Edgar Wideman grew up in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, a setting he has used for a number of his award-winning novels and stories. Damballah, Wideman's collection of stories about the fictionalized black community of Homewood, is the first in a trilogy consisting of Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday. Somewhat autobiographical, the books are linked by shared characters, events, and locales, like much of Wideman's writing, the stories in Damballah are intense and lyrical examinations of the intense psychological experience of black people in urban America.

The first story, "Orion," is about an African brought to an American plantation who wants to teach "the old ways" to a young slave. Knowing that only in death can he do so, he sets out to get it. "One scream that night. Like a bull when they cut off his maleness. . . . A bull screaming once that night and torches burning in the barn and Master and the men coming out and no Ryan. . . Mistress crying behind a locked door and Master messing with Patty down the quarters.

"Hazel" is the story of a young girl accidentally crippled by her brother and who is now trapped by her mother's good intentions. "When I look at you sitting in that chair... I can't tell you what a trial it is. Then I think. . . there's a whole lot she'll never have to suffer.. .. The lies of men, their nasty hands... having their way, having their babies."