Charles Johnson's FictionUniversity of Illinois Press, 2003 - 221 páginas 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. |
Contenido
Origins and Influences II | 11 |
Being and Race | 30 |
Philosophy and Folklore in Faith and the Good Thing | 51 |
The Sorcerers Apprentice | 79 |
Middle Passage | 130 |
Dreamer | 162 |
NOTES | 197 |
211 | |
Términos y frases comunes
achieve African American African American literature Allan Allmuseri Andrew artistic authors Benito Cereno Big Todd Black Arts Black Arts Movement black community black cultural nationalism black fiction Black Humor black identity black writers Bois's Calhoun challenges Charles Johnson Chaym Chicago conflict consciousness Cooter creative demonstrates Douglass Dreamer efforts Ellison Emerson emphasizes encounter enlightenment essay experience Ezekiel Faith father Furthermore Griffithses hope idea ideal intersubjectivity John Johnson's aesthetic King King's kwoon Lavidia liberation literary live martial arts Matthew means Melville Melville's Middle Passage Mingo narrative notes notion novel offers oppression overcome Oxherding Tale passing novel perceptions Phenomenology philosophical position Primevil quest race racial identity racialist Ralph Ellison reader response Rutherford sense signifying slave Smith social Sorcerer's Apprentice Soulcatcher story struggle suffering suggests Swamp Woman tension Thing tion Tippis tradition transcending transformation tribe values vision W. E. B. Du Bois worldview Wyatt York
Referencias a este libro
Postmodern Counternarratives: Irony and Audience in the Novels of Paul ... Christopher Donovan Sin vista previa disponible - 2004 |