Hoop roots

the long version

"Hoop Roots is John Edgar Wideman's memoir of discovering the game that has been his singular passion for nearly fifty years. It is equally, inevitably, the story of the roots of black basketball in America - a story inextricable from race, culture, love, and home.". "Combining memoir with history, folklore, and commentary, Wideman creates a magical evocation of his unique slice of American experience. He imagines the Harlem Globetrotters in 1927, on their way to an Illinois town where the only black resident would be lynched. A playground game in Greenwich Village conjures Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and the sources of black minstrelsy. African-American language, culture, music, and sport brilliantly interweave in a lyrical narrative that glides from nostalgia to outrage, from scholarly to streetwise, from defiant to celebratory."--BOOK JACKET.