Racism and Urban Development in John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire

Abstract

John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire has been often criticized for its lack of historical consciousness of African American. Ishmael Reed, particularly, indicates that Wideman entirely fails to articulate the true meanings of the holocaust of the MOVE cult in 1985. The paper, however, investigates how Wideman uses William Penn’s early racialized vision of Philadelphia to criticize racism which has completely destroyed the present African Americans’ lives. Through the lens of Cudjoe’s emotional but sharp insight, Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire leads readers to witness various apocalyptic images of the redeveloped city where African Americans are occupied at lower levels of working conditions. Cudjoe shows us that they are devastated not only by race-based urban development but also by materialism and consumerism. However, he attempts to find a possibility of African Americans’ lives in the apocalyptic vision of the city. He suggests that African Americans still have chances to recover the society from racism like Simba Muntu, the last survivor of the holocaust of the MOVE. In his encounter with the past in the present, Cudjoe asks readers to reconsider racism in American society and resist it in a way to enhance their present lives.