Hoop Roots

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 ago Wideman works magical riffs that connect black music language culture and sport. His voice modulates from nostalgic to outraged from scholarly to streetwise in describing the game that has sustained his passion throughout his life.