Hoop Roots

John Edgar Wideman's memoir follows his lifelong devotion to basketball, a sport he can no longer play himself. Woven through it are reflections on family, the places he has called home, romantic love, and race.

The book starts at a worn-down playground in Pittsburgh that the author came across roughly fifty years before this account. From that modest court, Wideman traces links between Black music, language, culture, and athletics, following each thread into wider reflection.

The prose shifts constantly in tone, moving from wistfulness to anger and from the measured voice of a scholar to the loose idiom of the street. Throughout, the game remains the emotional center that has sustained his passion from youth onward.