God"s Gym is the first story collection in more than a decade from one of our most celebrated African American authors. It is joined by the rerelease of his seminal memoir Brothers and Keepers and his award-winning novel Philadelphia Fire.
Wideman"s brash, jazzy stories have appeared in numerous magazines, from Harper"s to GQ to Callaloo. God"s Gym opens with "Weight": "My mother is a weightlifter. You know what I mean. She understand the best-laid plans, the sweetest beginnings, have a way of turning to shit." Whether the subject is "The Silence of Thelonious Monk" or "Who Invented the Jump Shot," Wideman astounds, his prose moving from the intimate to the political, from shock to
transcendence.