Both Jane Tompkins and John Edgar Wideman devote some of their paper to pointing out the difficulties they face when writing their essays, "Indians" and "Our Time" respectively. The two authors are trying to reach and give an account of the actual situation and circumstances of the subject of their writing, but in the process of creating their essays realize that this is something they would hardly achieve.
"Our time" was created to tell the story of the author's brother Robby, who is in jail for murder, to reveal him as a person and find the reasons for his trouble. However, setting out to write about this, Wideman becomes fully aware that his brother is a "familiar stranger" to him, that he doesn't know him and has yet to learn how to communicate and share with him in order to learn and write his story. …
