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 256 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.
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).
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 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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:
Download or read book A General History of The Pyrates written by Daniel Defoe and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A General History of the Pyrates’ is a captivating account of some of history’s most notorious pirates. The author, writing as Captain Charles Johnson, blends fiction and non-fiction to provide readers with a most entertaining version of these iconic heroes and villains. This book was a massive success upon its first release due to its adventurous stories filled with danger and treasure and its influence lives on to this day as it shaped the modern view of pirates. Some of the best accounts in the book are of the infamous Blackbeard and the trailblazing female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. ‘A General History of the Pyrates’ is the definitive story of the golden age of piracy and should be read by fans of books such as ‘Treasure Island’ and movies such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731) is one of the most important authors in the English language. Defoe was one of the original English novelists and greatly helped to popularise the form. Defoe was highly prolific and is believed to have written over 300 works ranging from novels to political pamphlets. He was highly celebrated but also controversial as his writings influenced politicians but also led to Defoe being imprisoned. Defoe’s novels have been translated into many languages and are still read across the globe to this day. Some of his most famous books include ‘Moll Flanders’ and ‘Robinson Crusoe’ which was adapted into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan and Damian Lewis in 1997. Defoe’s influence on English novels cannot be understated and his legacy lives on to this day.
Download or read book Charles S Johnson written by Patrick J. Gilpin and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Called to the Fire written by Chet Bush and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the true story of Dr. Charles Johnson, an African American preacher who went to Mississippi in 1961 during the summer of the Freedom Rides. Fresh out of Bible School Johnson hesitantly followed his call to pastor in Mississippi, a hotbed for race relations during the early 1960’s. Unwittingly thrust into the heart of a national tragedy, the murder of three Civil Rights activists, he overcame fear and adversity to become a leader in the Civil Rights movement. As a key African American witness to take the stand in the trial famously dubbed the “Mississippi Burning” case by the FBI, Charles Johnson played a key role for the Federal Justice Department, offering clarity to the event that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This story of love, conviction, adversity, and redemption climaxes with a shocking encounter between Charles and one of the murderers. The reader will be riveted to the details of a gracious life in pursuit of the call of God from the pulpit to the streets, and ultimately into the courtroom.
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).
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.
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.
Download or read book Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image written by Mary Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 25, 1890, the Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff publicly instructed his followers to abandon polygamy. In doing so, he initiated a process that would fundamentally alter the Latter-day Saints and their faith. Trading the most integral elements of their belief system for national acceptance, the Mormons recreated themselves as model Americans. Mary Campbell tells the story of this remarkable religious transformation in Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image. One of the church’s favorite photographers, Johnson (1857–1926) spent the 1890s and early 1900s taking pictures of Mormonism’s most revered figures and sacred sites. At the same time, he did a brisk business in mail-order erotica, creating and selling stereoviews that he referred to as his “spicy pictures of girls.” Situating these images within the religious, artistic, and legal culture of turn-of-the-century America, Campbell reveals the unexpected ways in which they worked to bring the Saints into the nation’s mainstream after the scandal of polygamy. Engaging, interdisciplinary, and deeply researched, Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image demonstrates the profound role pictures played in the creation of both the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the modern American nation.
Download or read book Why Coolidge Matters written by Charles C. Johnson and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coolidge is one of the nation's most underrated presidents. Coolidge's thought on topics like public sector unions, education, race, governance, immigration, and foreign policy requires restoration if the constitutional, industrial republic is to be preserved in the modern age.
Download or read book Grand written by Charles Johnson and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 104 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.
Download or read book King written by Charles Johnson and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2000 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King is the first true photobiography of a hero's journey. Never before has his life been so richly chronicled from so many different points of view. A powerful collection of photographic images combined with text by National Book Awardwinning writer Charles Johnson detail the pivotal events of King's public life--as well as his family life--in a rich & stirring format. In this book, we see Martin Luther King, Jr., in all his aspects: as son & student, husband & father, powerful preacher & courageous leader of the civil rights movement, martyr for the cause of racial justice, & finally American icon. Photographer Bob Adelman & photo editor Robert Phelan have compiled an impressive & comprehensive array of images depicting this great man's life & times. We see King standing before a packed congregation at the Dexter Baptist Church during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, or in his own backyard playing with his children. In one moment we observe King peering calmly through the bars of the Birmingham jail after one of his arrests; the next, strapping sandals on the feet of his young daughter. There is the tragic scene in Memphis seconds after his assassination, with anguished witnesses pointing in the direction of the gunshots, & the aftermath in Atlanta, a crush of mourners following his horse-drawn casket through the streets. And of course, the indelible image of King speaking the immortal words "I have a dream..." on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Through hundreds of photographs, we see a country being changed, an era & legacy being formed, but above all, we are given a privileged look at the man himself--at his most human & humanitarian.
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 209 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.
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 239 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.
Download or read book The Civil War Letters of Colonel Charles F Johnson Invalid Corps written by Charles Francis Johnson and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organized in May 1863 to meet the Union Army's growing manpower needs, the Invalid Corps -- later renamed the Veteran Reserve Corps -- was a unique military unit. With more than twenty-four regiments of troops, nearly all of them men disabled by illness or combat wounds, it was at one point twice as large as the entire pre-war United States Army. During four years of service its troops enforced the draft, guarded prisoners and vital outposts, protected rail lines and supply depots, and served as military police in cities all across the country. Members of the Corps escorted President Lincoln's body home to Illinois, and after the war its officers formed the nucleus of the new Freedman's Bureau. This volume brings together some 143 letters written by Colonel Charles F. Johnson, an officer who served with the 18th Veteran Reserve Corps after sustaining debilitating wounds during the Seven Days' Battles in June 1862. Edited with an introduction by Fred Pelka, the letters describe the day-to-day circumstances of "The Cripple Brigade," as it was derisively called, as well as guerrilla warfare in Missouri, combat in Virginia, and barracks life in Washington, D.C. Johnson was a keen observer of his nation at war, and his correspondence with his wife Mary is by turns literate and comic, objective and personal. In his introduction and annotations, Pelka provides a detailed history of the Invalid Corps and explores the experience of disability in nineteenth-century America. He looks at how the nation responded to the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of newly disabled young men, and traces how members of the Invalid Corps fought not only to restore the Union but also to retain their dignity as Americans and as human beings.
