Writing to Save a Life
The Louis Till File
by John Edgar Wideman
Pub Date 15 Nov 2016
Scribner


I am reviewing a copy of Writing to Save a Life through Scribner and Netgalley:


Emmett Till had taken a train from his home in Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi, a few weeks later he returned home but he was dead. Murdered because he was a colored boy and had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till, chose to display her son’s brutalized face in a glass-topped casket, “so the world can see what they did to my baby.”


The Murder of Emmett Till and his mother’s refusal to allow his story to be forgotten have become American legends. But one darkly significant twist in the Till legend is rarely mentioned: Louis Till, Emmett’s father, Mamie’s husband, a soldier during World War II, was executed in Italy for committing rape and murder.



In 1955 when Wideman and Emmett were only fourteen years old , Wideman saw a horrific photograph of dead Emmett’s battered face. Decades later, upon discovering that Louis Till had been court-martialed and hanged, he was impelled to investigate the tragically intertwined fates of father and son. Writing to Save a Life is “part exploration and part meditation, a searching account of [Wideman’s] attempt to learn more about the short life of Louis Till” (The New York Times Book Review) and shine light on the truths that have remained in darkness.



I give Writing to Save A Life five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

Just finished this one and am continuing to process it. There is a temptation to dismiss Wideman’s suppositions mixed with streams of consciousness, in which he thoroughly plunges his own origin story into the trials and outcomes of Louis and Emmett Till. I had no idea that Emmett Till’s father was executed by court martial, a sentence that hung heavy on Emmett’s own life. There are certainly more questions than answers in the Louis Till file, and Wideman’s exploration leaves the reader uneasy. My frustration with the unresolved tensions is only the merest indicator of the many boggling injustices enmeshing “a universe where all truths are equal until power chooses one truth to serve its needs.” (22)

I wasn't sure how factual the book is, but it struck a chord with me. I remember hearing about Emmett Till Jr, as a kid. The book was informative at best, but rambled in a few places.