Charles Richard Johnson

A collection of stories that explore issues of identity and race.

"Jim McWilliams has gathered here the most significant of Charles Johnson's many interviews in a chronological progression, giving an invaluable account of Johnson's development from the late 1970s until the early years of the twenty-first century. The interviews bring up many essential elements of Johnson's life and work: his religious development from the AME Church to Buddhism; the importance to him of family; his emergence out of the civil rights and black power movements, and how his writing responds to both; the importance of his relationship with his mentor John Gardner and his own work as a teacher of creative writing; his interest in phenomenology and philosophical fiction. Capping the collection are two previously unpublished interviews that reflect back upon Johnson's career, even as they look forward to what Johnson calls "Act Three" of his life."--BOOK JACKET.

"Nothing has had as profound an effect on American life as slavery. For blacks and whites alike, the experience has left us with a conflicted and contradictory history. Now, in fictional form, National Book Award-winning author Charles Johnson presents twelve stories illuminating slavery's effects and experiences. From Martha Washington's management of her slaves following the death of her husband to a boy chained in the bowels of a ship laden with human cargo plying the infamous passage from Africa to the South; from a lynching in Indiana to a hunter of escaped slaves searching the Boston market for his quarry; from a Quaker meeting exploring resettlement in Africa to the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation - the voices, terrors, and savagery of slavery come unforgettably to life. These tales transcend history even as they present it, and retell the tragic proportions of a period with astounding realism, power, and emotion."--BOOK JACKET.

Contains a lecture by Charles Johnson, ETHS alumnus of the class of 1967, on "The philosopher and the American novel," presented during National Book Week in 1991.

Though best known for his fiction, Charles Johnson is also an accomplished essayist, reviewer, scriptwriter, and cartoonist. As he himself says, "I call myself an artist." This volume gathers together a rich sampling of his work: stories and outtakes from the novels; essays, including a lengthy autobiography; cartoons; speeches; and interviews.

Initially conceived as an exploration of "the plight of the black male in the United States," Black Men Speaking is that and more. It gives expression to a range of issues - cultural, economic, psychological, religious, and personal - as seen by a remarkable group of black men - novelists, a well-known artist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, a doctor, an editor, an academic, a famous musician, and a group of ordinary citizens from Harlem. Powerful voices give us powerful images and powerful messages.

A freed slave escapes his bad debts in New Orleans by stowing away on a slave ship en route to Africa.