Charles Johnson in Context PDF Download

Author: Linda F. Selzer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781613761618
Category : African Americans in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

View

Book Description

Author: Charles Johnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501147234
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
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.

Author: Charles Johnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439125031
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

View

Book Description
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).

Author: Chuck Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578521626
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 212

View

Book Description
Your character determines your ambition, your leadership abilities, the way you relate to other people. Understanding Character will allow you to feel more comfortable. Frustration with others is decreased, and relationships improve. Embarking upon the journey of understanding starts now...with you.

Author: Gary Storhoff
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570035623
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

View

Book Description
Understanding Charles Johnson offers a critical introduction to the fiction of one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary writers and the first African American male since Ralph Ellison to win the National Book Award, which Johnson received in 1990 for Middle Passage. In addition to providing a biographical sketch, Gary Storhoff analyzes Johnson's four novels and two volumes of short stories. Describing his body of work as unique in American fiction, Storhoff explains how philosophical and religious orientations differentiate Johnson's writings and challenge his readers. Storhoff explores the merging of Johnson's philosophical and spiritual interests with his concern for African American culture. In identifying the literary principles of Johnson's texts, Storhoff emphasizes the writer's commitment to Buddhism and demonstrates its impact on his themes, characters, narratives, and rhetoric. Suggesting that Buddhism is the linchpin of Johnson's work, Storhoff acknowledges that scholars and critics are aware of Johnson's close association with the tradition but provides readers with what they need to appreciate fully its importance in his work. which includes a Ph.D. in the subject. Storhoff explicates the influence of the British empiricists, including Bishop George Berkeley, on the novelist; his rejection of relativism and utilitarianism; his adaptation of Aristotelian ethics; and his ambivalent treatment of American pragmatism as recently propounded by Cornel West. Johnson emerges from Storhoff's discussion as a profoundly eclectic, sophisticated, interdisciplinary writer, with complex views on race relations in the twenty-first century.

Author: Ruth King
Publisher: Sounds True
ISBN: 1683640829
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
How to grow our inner capacity to face racial ignorance and suffering with a wise and caring heart “Racism is a heart disease,” writes Ruth King, “and it's curable.” Exploring a crucial topic seldom addressed in meditation instruction, this revered teacher takes to her pen to shine a compassionate, provocative, and practical light into a deeply neglected and world-changing domain profoundly relevant to all of us. With Mindful of Race, Ruth King offers: Tend first to our suffering, listen to what it is trying to teach us, and direct its energies most effectively for change. Here, she invites us to explore: Ourselves as racial beings, the dynamics of oppression, and our role in racismThe power of paying homage to our most turbulent emotions, and perceiving the wisdom they holdKey mindfulness tools to understand and engage with racial tensionIdentifying our “soft spots” of fear and vulnerability—how we defend them and how to heal themEmbracing discomfort, which is a core competency for transformationHow our thoughts and emotions “rigidify” our sense of self—and how to return to the natural flow of who we areBody, breath, and relaxation practices to befriend and direct our inner resourcesIdentifying our most sensitive “activation points” and tending to them with caring awareness“It’s not just your pain”—the generational constellations of racial rage and ignorance and how to work with themAnd many other compelling topics Drawing on her expertise as a meditation teacher and diversity consultant, King helps readers of all backgrounds examine with fresh eyes the complexity of racial identity and the dynamics of oppression. She offers guided instructions on how to work with our own role in the story of race and shows us how to cultivate a culture of care to come to a place of greater clarity and compassion.

Author: Charles Johnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143912552X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 229

View

Book Description
From the National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage, a fearless fictional portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his pivotal moment in American history. 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. Dr. Charles Johnson is a novelist, screenwriter, essayist, professional cartoonist and the Pollock Professor of English at the University of Washington. He is the author of more than sixteen books, including the PEN/Faulkner nominated story collection The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the novel Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award.

Author: Patrick J. Gilpin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486060
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

View

Book Description
The milestones for blacks in twentieth-century America—the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle for equal education, and the civil rights movement—would have been inconceivable without the contributions of one important but often overlooked figure, Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956). This compelling biography demonstrates the scope of his achievements, situates him among other black intellectuals of his time, and casts new light on a pivotal era in the struggle for black equality in America. An impresario of Harlem Renaissance culture, an eminent Chicago-trained sociologist, a pioneering race relations leader, and an educator of the generation that freed itself from legalized segregation, Johnson was a visionary who linked the everyday struggles of blacks with the larger intellectual and political currents of the day. His distinguished career included twenty-eight years at Fisk University, where he established the famed Race Relations Institute and became Fisk's first black president.

Author: Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351811851
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

View

Book Description
While there are many books that teach the "how-to" of photography, Science for the Curious Photographer is a book for those who also want to understand how photography works. Beginning with an introduction to the history and science of photography, Charles S. Johnson, Jr. addresses questions about the principles of photography, such as why a camera needs a lens, how lenses work, and why modern lenses are so complicated. Addressing the complex aspects of digital photography, the book discusses color management, resolution, "noise" in images, and the limits of human perception. The creation and appreciation of art in photography is discussed from the standpoint of modern cognitive science. A crucial read for those seeking the scientific context to photographic practice, this second edition has been comprehensively updated, including discussion of DSLRs, mirror-less cameras, and a new chapter on the limits of human vision and perception.

Author: Charles Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156008549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 554

View

Book Description
Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.