Books & the Arts / Homelands John Edgar Wideman’s American vernacular John Edgar Wideman’s American Vernacular The master novelist offers a view of a United States defined by its cultures of improvisation. Languages of Home is John Edgar Wideman’s first collection of essays, profiles, and creative nonfiction. Books in review Languages of Home: Essays on Writing, Hoop, and American Lives, 1975–2025 Buy this bookWideman may even greet Languages with some ambivalence. In 1968, a group of Black undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania approached him with a request: Please offer and lead a course on Black American literature. Since then, Black American writers have been transmitting their individual improvisations on Chesnutt’s innovations.