Basketball is only the starting point for novelist John Edgar Wideman's meditations in this genre-defying book, which announces its difference in the opening paragraph. Some other author might have written the sentence, "Playing the game provided sanctuary, refuge from a hostile world." Only Wideman would follow it with, "Only trouble was, to reach the court we had left our women behind," and only Wideman would close a book about playground basketball with a letter to his grandmother. In between, he contrasts the sport with the craft of writing; mingles memories of learning to play with recollections of growing up in Pittsburgh; invokes the lover he found after his 30-year marriage broke up ("Turning this into a basketball game, aren't you, Mr. Hoopster?" she says at one point during their affair); talks about minstrel shows and African American music; and pits the purity and democracy of schoolyard ball against the professional sport, in which "a chosen few, players certified to be the very best, perform for pay as entertainers." You'll need to read it all to appreciate the way Wideman masterfully weaves together these diverse strands; suffice it to say that the importance of basketball to black men in a racist society, though a crucial subject here, is too straightforward to be the entire topic. "The deepest, simplest subject of this hoop book is pleasure," he writes, and he conveys that sensation to his readers on several different levels: the excitement of a superb description (men playing on a Greenwich Village court); the satisfaction of shrewd cultural analysis (why poor kids wear expensive clothes to play); the power of metaphor (the searing chapter titled "Who Invented the Jump Shot (A Fable)"); and most of all the thrill of watching an artist at the top of his game. --Wendy Smith


From Library Journal
Basketball originally propelled novelist Wideman away from the Pittsburgh that later inspired his wonderful Homewood novels, such as Sent for You Yesterday. In more recent novels, Philadelphia Fire and Two Cities, Wideman's narratives have often detoured back to the ball court. Hoop Roots is more openly about the author's lifelong relationship to the game, but it has its share of breakaways, too, into black, white, music, love, marriage, seduction, and divorce as the author takes stock of changes in himself and his boyhood world. Part middle-aged memoir, part blacktop coming-of-age story, the book is Wideman's grudging acknowledgment that, still dabbling in pick-up ball at 59, he is laboring in an unforgiving game of youth. Wideman ably contrasts his early tutelage on the all-male ball court with his boyhood in a matriarchal household. But despite its impressionistic historical sweeps, this book's attempts at a cultural history of the sport are unsatisfying (especially Wideman's crankily light chapter on the jump shot). Nor does it dwell as long as it might on the national basketball success of the author's daughter Jamila. Basketball is a standard (along with writing) against which Wideman has long measured himself, and this uneven but original work is his "way of holding on." For dedicated Wideman fans and large sports collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/01.] Nathan Ward, "Library Journal"Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Wideman, the acclaimed author of Fatheralong (1994) and Brothers and Keepers (1984), examines his lifelong relationship with basketball. Growing up in Pittsburgh, Wideman, now in his fifties, found that basketball offered a way for a young black boy to gain stature, even love, from his family and the community. The game also allowed one to play alone, with no reliance on others. In Wideman's case, he was able to turn his prep success into a college education and a writing career. But basketball has meant far more to him than a stepping-stone to a better life. As he describes his complex relationship with the game, and uses it to conjure memories of his family, especially his grandmother, he recognizes that basketball still helps him define himself and provides a connection to all that he has been, might have been, or will be. There's a telling moment when he encounters an old coach who told a young Wideman that he was the best rebounder he'd ever seen. Now years later, with the coach having spent years in the NBA, Wideman wants to know if he's still number one in the coach's mind. In a life filled with academic and literary success, rebounding still matters. Wideman says that whatever readers may think of this book, he needs it. Hoops and writing are vehicles with which Wideman can set his own standards in a white world that often imposes definitions of success on black people. It may be difficult at this point to determine where he fits in the pantheon of all-time rebounders, but if the passion and fearlessness present in his writing are also part of his game, Wideman can stand tall among the best. Poignant, thought-provoking reading. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

John Edgar Wideman presents a look at the connection between the game of basketball with both his own life and the history of black America. His novels have tended to reflect on the game, but in Hoop Roots he focuses on how black manhood and basketball have been intertwined for generations. What does a 59-year-old do when his jump shot is starting to fade a bit? Wideman shows that he's still got game.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, love, and race, John Edgar Wideman's Hoop Roots brings "a touch of Proust to the blacktop" (Time) as it tells of the author's love for a game he can no longer play. Beginning with the scruffy backlot playground he discovered in Pittsburgh some fifty years a&o, Wideman works magical riffs that connect black music, language, culture, and sport. His voice modulates from nostalgic to outraged, from scholarly to a street-wise, in describing the game that has sustained his passion throughout his life. "Challenging, furious, confounding, and healing ... Hoop Roots is more than just a sports book" (Boston Globe). Like his memoirs Brothers and Keepers and Fatheralong, Wideman's Hoop Roots is both deeply personal and fiercely resonant. Selected as a Nonfiction Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and a finalist for the Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the year

SYNOPSIS

While presenting a memoir of discovering basketball, novelist Wideman (U. of Massachusetts-Amherst) reveals much about the origins of black basketball in the US.

Annotation © Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Basketball originally propelled novelist Wideman away from the Pittsburgh that later inspired his wonderful Homewood novels, such as Sent for You Yesterday. In more recent novels, Philadelphia Fire and Two Cities, Wideman's narratives have often detoured back to the ball court. Hoop Roots is more openly about the author's lifelong relationship to the game, but it has its share of breakaways, too, into black, white, music, love, marriage, seduction, and divorce as the author takes stock of changes in himself and his boyhood world. Part middle-aged memoir, part blacktop coming-of-age story, the book is Wideman's grudging acknowledgment that, still dabbling in pick-up ball at 59, he is laboring in an unforgiving game of youth. Wideman ably contrasts his early tutelage on the all-male ball court with his boyhood in a matriarchal household. But despite its impressionistic historical sweeps, this book's attempts at a cultural history of the sport are unsatisfying (especially Wideman's crankily light chapter on the jump shot). Nor does it dwell as long as it might on the national basketball success of the author's daughter Jamila. Basketball is a standard (along with writing) against which Wideman has long measured himself, and this uneven but original work is his "way of holding on." For dedicated Wideman fans and large sports collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/01.] Nathan Ward, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews