Charles Johnson's Fiction

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Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252027734
Total Pages : 250 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Charles Johnson's Fiction by : William R. Nash

Download or read book Charles Johnson's Fiction written by William R. Nash and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fearless experimenter and one of the most important contemporary American writers, Charles Johnson challenges separatist politics and tries to get beyond race as a literary category. In Charles Johnson's Fiction, William R. Nash emphasizes and explores the tensions in Johnson's work between his ideal of race as illusion and his methods of articulating racial grievance. Nash examines Johnson's short stories, novels--Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage, and Dreamer--and the nonfiction work Being and Race. Tracing the themes of Johnson's political and artistic concerns as they evolved in his work, Nash locates his fascination with the aesthetics of the Black Arts Movement and his dismissal of separatist black politics and racialist thought. He also considers Johnson's adoption of Western and Eastern philosophies and belief that race is a blinding, limiting category that impedes the exploration of individual and collective identity. In formulating a mode of expression that balances the conflicting demands of race and aesthetics, Johnson crafts a new vision of history and African American identity that signifies on a range of black and white literary predecessors, including Zora Neale Hurston, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Herman Melville. Nash argues that Johnson's hybrid philosophy of Buddhism and phenomenology defies the basic premises of identity formation and leads to the perception of a different self. Juxtaposed with jarring storylines of racial injustice, Johnson's notion that race is an illusion informs his aesthetic, promotes his strategies for battling oppression, and reminds readers what African Americans have already overcome in the quest to cultivate new visions of identity. Charles Johnson's Fiction also includes eight of Johnson's cartoons published in Black Humor and Half-Past Nation Time in the early 1970s.

Charles Johnson's Novels

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253111203
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis Charles Johnson's Novels by : Rudolph P. Byrd

Download or read book Charles Johnson's Novels written by Rudolph P. Byrd and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is truly a major contribution to African American literary criticism, and it promises to elevate Johnson to the place in the literary firmament he so richly deserves." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University Charles Johnson came of age during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His fiction bears the imprint of his formal training as a philosopher and his work as a journalist and cartoonist with a well-honed interest in political satire. Mentored by the American writer John Gardner, Johnson is preoccupied with questions of morality, which are informed by his knowledge of Continental and Asian philosophical traditions. In this book, Rudolph Byrd examines Johnson's four novels -- Faith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage (National Book Award Winner), and Dreamer -- under the rubric of philosophical black fiction, as art that interrogates experience. Byrd contends that Johnson suspends, shelves, and brackets all presuppositions regarding African American life. This bracketing accomplished, the African American experience becomes a pure field of appearances within two poles: consciousness and the people or phenomena to which it is related. Johnson's principal themes are identity and liberation. Intent upon the liberation of perception, for the reader and the writer, Johnson's fiction aims at "whole sight," encompassing a plurality of meanings across a symbolic geography of forms, texts, and traditions from within the matrix of African American life and culture. And like a palimpsest, Johnson's texts contain multiple layers of meaning of disparate origins imprinted over time with varying degrees of visibility and significance. Charles Johnson's Novels will appeal to fans of the writer's work, but it also will serve as a helpful guide for readers newly introduced to this brilliant contemporary American writer.

Middle Passage

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439125031
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Middle Passage by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Middle Passage written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Charles Johnson’s National Book Award-winning masterpiece—"a novel in the tradition of Billy Budd and Moby-Dick…heroic in proportion…fiction that hooks the mind" (The New York Times Book Review)—now with a new introduction from Stanley Crouch. Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and irrepressible rogue, is lost in the underworld of 1830s New Orleans. Desperate to escape the city’s unscrupulous bill collectors and the pawing hands of a schoolteacher hellbent on marrying him, he jumps aboard the Republic, a slave ship en route to collect members of a legendary African tribe, the Allmuseri. Thus begins a voyage of metaphysical horror and human atrocity, a journey which challenges our notions of freedom, fate and how we live together. Peopled with vivid and unforgettable characters, nimble in its interplay of comedy and serious ideas, this dazzling modern classic is a perfect blend of the picaresque tale, historical romance, sea yarn, slave narrative and philosophical allegory. Now with a new introduction from renowned writer and critic Stanley Crouch, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Middle Passage celebrates a cornerstone of the American canon and the masterwork of one of its most important writers. "Long after we’d stopped believe in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that" (Chicago Tribune).

The Way of the Writer

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501147234
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Way of the Writer by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book The Way of the Writer written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Charles Johnson—a National Book Award winner, Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, and one of America’s preeminent scholars on literature and race—comes an instructive, inspiring guide to the craft and art of writing. An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor, and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has devoted his life to creative pursuit. His 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage is a modern classic, revered as much for its daring plot as its philosophical underpinnings. For thirty-three years, Johnson taught and mentored students in the art and craft of creative writing. The Way of the Writer is his record of those years, and the coda to a kaleidoscopic, boundary-shattering career. Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence structure, and narrative voice, and delving into the mechanics of scene, dialogue, plot and storytelling before exploring the larger questions at stake for the serious writer. What separates literature from industrial fiction? What lies at the heart of the creative impulse? How does one navigate the literary world? And how are philosophy and fiction concomitant? Luminous, inspiring, and imminently accessible, The Way of the Writer is a revelatory glimpse into the mind of the writer and an essential guide for anyone with a story to tell.

Night Hawks

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Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1501184393
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Night Hawks by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Night Hawks written by Charles Johnson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, “the celebrated novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and essayist…comes a small treasure, one to be read and considered and reread” (The New York Times Book Review), showcasing his incredible range and resonant voice. Charles Johnson’s Night Hawks presents an eclectic, masterful collection of stories tied together by Buddhist themes and displaying all the grace, heart, and insight for which he has long been known. Spanning genres from science fiction to realism, “Johnson’s writing, filled with the sort of long, layered sentences you can get happily lost in, conveys a kindness; a sense that all of us…have our own stories” (The Seattle Times). In “The Weave,” Ieesha and her boyfriend carry out a heist at the salon from which she has just been fired—coming away with thousands of dollars of merchandise in the form of hair extensions. “Night Hawks,” the titular story, draws on Johnson’s friendship with the late playwright August Wilson to construct a narrative about two writers who meet at night to talk. In “Kamadhatu,” a lonely Japanese abbot has his quiet world upended by a visit from a black American Buddhist whose presence pushes him toward the awakening he has long found elusive. “Occupying Arthur Whitfield,” about a cab driver who decides to rob the home of a wealthy passenger, reminds readers to be grateful for what they have. And “The Night Belongs to Phoenix Jones” combines the real-life story of a “superhero” in the city of Seattle with an invented narrative about an aging English professor who decides to join him. With precise, elegant, and moving language, Johnson creates an “arresting” array of “indelible moments that show Johnson to be a master of the short form” (Library Journal, starred review). Night Hawks is “a masterpiece…[that] ultimately offers a message of empowerment and hope” (Oprah.com).

Charles Johnson in Context

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781613761618
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis Charles Johnson in Context by : Linda F. Selzer

Download or read book Charles Johnson in Context written by Linda F. Selzer and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Dreamer

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 143912552X
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Dreamer by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Dreamer written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the tensions of Civil Rights era America, Dreamer is a remarkable fictional excursion into the last two years of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, when the political and personal pressures on this country's most preeminent moral leader were the greatest. While in Chicago for his first northern campaign against poverty and inequality, King encounters Chaym Smith, whose startling physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. Matthew Bishop, a civil rights worker and loyal follower of King, is given the task of training the smart and deeply cynical Smith for the job. In doing so, Bishop must face the issue of what makes one man great while another man can only stand in for greatness. Provocative, heartfelt, and masterfully rendered, Charles Johnson confirms yet again that he is one of the great treasures of modern American literature.

Faith and the Good Thing

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743215346
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Faith and the Good Thing by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Faith and the Good Thing written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-07-12 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faith Cross, a beautiful and purely innocent young black woman, is told by her dying mother to go and get herself "a good thing." Thus begins an extraordinary pilgrim's progress that takes Faith from the magic and mysticism of the rural South to the promises and perils of modern-day Chicago. It is an odyssey that propels Faith from the degradation of prostitution, drugs, and drink into a faceless middle-class reality, and finally into a searing tragedy that ironically leads to the discovery of the real Good Thing. National Book Award-winner Charles Johnson's first novel, originally published in 1974, puts the life-affirming soul of the African-American experience at the summit of American storytelling.

Being and Race

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476760985
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis Being and Race by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Being and Race written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in ebook, renowned scholar Charles Johnson’s exploration of contemporary black literature and the meaning of the black experience as expressed through the writers Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, David Bradley, and others. Charles Johnson approaches contemporary black literature through the lens of phenomenology. Drawing on such philosophers as Heidegger, Husserl, Satre, and Dufrenne, Johnson addresses the esthetic and epistemological questions surrounding the black experience as expressed by African American authors. In exploring the works of Wright, Toomer, Bradley, and many more, Being and Race enlarges our vision of what fiction’s purpose is and how it arises from our common experiences.

Africans in America

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Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780156008549
Total Pages : 554 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (85 download)

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Book Synopsis Africans in America by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Africans in America written by Charles Johnson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1999 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.

Taming the Ox

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Publisher : Shambhala Publications
ISBN 13 : 0834800004
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis Taming the Ox by : Charles R. Johnson

Download or read book Taming the Ox written by Charles R. Johnson and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned author and National Book Award winner Dr. Charles Johnson writes that his creative work and Buddhist practice are the two activities in his life that have reinforced each other—and have anchored him. In this wide and varied collection of essays, reviews, and short stories, Johnson offers writings that passionately and compellingly illuminate how politics, race, and spiritual life intersect in our changing culture. Throughout his long and varied creative career, Johnson has been a cartoonist and illustrator, screen- and teleplay writer, novelist, philosopher, short fiction writer, essayist, literary scholar, and professor. His work is often philosophically, politically, and spiritually oriented, and he has deeply explored racial issues in the United States, most notably in his novel Middle Passage, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990. Johnson received a MacArthur Fellowship, or "Genius Grant," in 1998. Taming the Ox is a wonderful reflection of what Johnson has learned during his passage through American literature, the visual arts, and the Buddhadharma.

Grand

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Publisher : Harlequin
ISBN 13 : 1488057206
Total Pages : 99 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (88 download)

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Book Synopsis Grand by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Grand written by Charles Johnson and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson reflects on the joys of being a grandparent in this warm, inspiring collection of wisdom and life lessons—the ideal gift for any new parent or grandparent An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has held numerous impressive titles over the course of his incomparable career. Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his most important role yet: grandparent. In Grand, Johnson shares stories from his life with his six-year-old grandson, Emery, weaving in advice and life lessons that stand the test of time. “Looking at the problems I see in the world around me,” Johnson writes, “I realize that there are so many things I want to say to him about the goodness and beauty that life offers. What are the perennial truths that I can impart to Emery that might make his journey through life easier or more rewarding?” Johnson shares these truths and more, offering profound meditations on family, race, freedom and creativity. Joyful, lucid and deeply comforting, Grand is Johnson at his most accessible and profound, an indispensable compendium for new grandparents and growing grandchildren alike, from one of America’s most revered thinkers.

Black Men Speaking

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Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253332592
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (325 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Men Speaking by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Black Men Speaking written by Charles Johnson and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representative American black men discuss race, racism, and values.

Dr. King's Refrigerator

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416585494
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis Dr. King's Refrigerator by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Dr. King's Refrigerator written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Johnson's innovative and richly imagined collection is full of stories -- sly, witty, and insightful -- that bring the world into focus. Each is a vivid cultural and philosophical portrait that deftly explores issues of identity and race. "Kwoon" follows the spiritual journey of a martial arts teacher on Chicago's South Side. "Sweet Dreams" is a Kafkaesque tale set in a world where dreams are taxed and a man and his dreamlife are being audited. "The Gift of the Osuo" is a fable about the dangers of getting what you wish for. In "Cultural Relativity," a young woman falls in love with the son of the president of an African nation but is forbidden to ever kiss him. The title story is an illuminating and deeply human tale about pre-Montgomery Martin Luther King Jr. and a revelation he had when he looked into his refrigerator late one night. Provocative, engaging, and compassionate, Dr. King's Refrigerator is a superb and important collection from a major American voice.

Turning the Wheel

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 9781439125830
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (258 download)

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Book Synopsis Turning the Wheel by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book Turning the Wheel written by Charles Johnson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Were it not for the Buddhadharma, says Charles Johnson in his preface to Turning the Wheel, "I'm convinced that, as a black American and an artist, I would not have been able to successfully negotiate my last half century of life in this country. Or at least not with a high level of creative productivity." In this collection of provocative and intimate essays, Johnson writes of the profound connection between Buddhism and creativity, and of the role of Eastern philosophy in the quest for a free and thoughtful life. In 1926, W. E. B. Du Bois asked African-Americans what they would most want were the color line miraculously forgotten. In Turning the Wheel, Johnson sets out to explore this question by examining his experiences both as a writer and as a practitioner of Buddhism. He looks at basic Buddhist principles and practices, demonstrating how Buddhism is both the most revolutionary and most civilized of possible human choices. He discusses fundamental Buddhist practices such as the Eightfold Path, Taming the Mind, and Sangha and illuminates their place in the American Civil Rights movement. Johnson moves from spiritual guides to spiritual nourishment: writing. In essays touching on the role of the black intellectual, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Ralph Ellison, Johnson uses tools of Buddhist thinking to clarify difficult ideas. Powerful and revelatory, these essays confirm that writing and reading, along with Buddhism, are the basic components that make up a thoughtful life.

Juneteenth (Revised)

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0593314611
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis Juneteenth (Revised) by : Ralph Ellison

Download or read book Juneteenth (Revised) written by Ralph Ellison and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., TIME From the renowned author of the classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth is brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise. With a new introduction by National Book Award-winning author and scholar Charles R. Johnson. Here is Ellison, the master of American vernacular—the preacher’s hyperbole and the politician’s rhetoric, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech—at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. “Tell me what happened while there’s still time,” demands the dying senator Adam Sunraider to the Reverend A. Z. Hickman, the itinerant Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. His history encompasses camp meetings where he became the risen Lazarus to inspire the faithful; the more ordinary joys of Southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker; lovemaking with a young woman in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?

The Words and Wisdom of Charles Johnson

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781936873647
Total Pages : 672 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (736 download)

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Book Synopsis The Words and Wisdom of Charles Johnson by : Charles Johnson

Download or read book The Words and Wisdom of Charles Johnson written by Charles Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of thoughts and insights from one of America's keenest observers