A short life of the author
Charles Johnson is the most philosophically ambitious African American novelist of his generation — a writer who combines the narrative invention of the nineteenth-century adventure novel with the intellectual rigour of academic philosophy and the spiritual discipline of Buddhism to produce fiction that is unlike anything else in American literature. His masterpiece, Middle Passage (1990, National Book Award), told the story of a newly freed slave who stows away on a ship bound for Africa to collect slaves, and the voyage becomes a philosophical journey through questions of identity, freedom, and the nature of being that draws equally on Herman Melville, Martin Heidegger, and the Eightfold Path. Johnson is also a visual artist — he began his career as a political cartoonist and illustrator — and his work in multiple media reflects his conviction that art, philosophy, and spiritual practice are ultimately the same activity.
Evanston
Charles Richard Johnson was born in 1948 in Evanston, Illinois. He began drawing as a child, studied under the cartoonist Lawrence Lariar, and published his first book of political cartoons, Black Humor (1970), at the age of twenty-two. He earned a BA in journalism and a PhD in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, studying phenomenology and literary aesthetics under the philosopher John Gardner, who became his mentor and whose influence on Johnson’s fiction was profound.
Gardner taught Johnson that fiction must be “moral” — not didactic or preachy, but engaged with the deepest questions of human existence. Johnson absorbed this lesson and combined it with his study of phenomenology (particularly the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty), Eastern philosophy (particularly Buddhism, to which he has been a lifelong practitioner and advocate), and the African American literary tradition.
The Early Novels
Faith and the Good Thing (1974) was Johnson’s first novel — a picaresque journey of a young Black woman from the rural South to Chicago in search of “the Good Thing,” a quest that moves through realism, folklore, and philosophical allegory. The novel announced Johnson’s distinctive method: the marriage of Black vernacular storytelling with Western philosophical inquiry.
Oxherding Tale (1982) was his breakthrough — a neo-slave narrative that reimagined the genre through the lens of Eastern philosophy. The title refers to the “Ten Oxherding Pictures,” a series of Zen Buddhist illustrations depicting the stages of spiritual enlightenment. The novel follows Andrew Hawkins, the mixed-race son of a plantation master and a slave woman, through a journey from bondage to freedom that is simultaneously a spiritual awakening. It was the most intellectually original slave narrative since Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Middle Passage
Middle Passage (1990) won the National Book Award and established Johnson as one of the most important American novelists of his time. The novel is narrated by Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave in 1830 New Orleans who stows away on the Republic, a slave ship captained by the tyrannical Ebenezer Falcon, which is bound for the west coast of Africa to collect members of the mysterious Allmuseri tribe. The voyage becomes a metaphysical ordeal — the Allmuseri possess a sacred artifact of terrifying power, the crew mutinies, and Calhoun is forced to confront the meaning of freedom, identity, and moral responsibility.
The novel was widely praised for its narrative energy, its intellectual ambition, and its prose — which drew on Melville, Conrad, and the picaresque tradition while remaining entirely original.
The Philosophical Work
Johnson’s nonfiction is as substantial as his fiction. Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988) was a major work of literary criticism that analysed African American fiction through the lens of phenomenology. Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing (2003) collected his essays on Buddhism and its relationship to the creative life. The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (2016) was his guide to the practice of fiction writing.
Collecting Johnson
Middle Passage (Atheneum, 1990) in first edition with dust jacket is the primary target — the National Book Award winner. Oxherding Tale (Indiana University Press, 1982) is the philosophical breakthrough. Being and Race (Indiana University Press, 1988) is the critical work. Black Humor (1970), the early cartoon collection, is scarce and of interest as Johnson’s first publication. Johnson has been a generous signer throughout his career.
Bibliography
| Title | Year | Publisher | Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End Johnson's essay collection — some pieces written decades ago, others recent — addresses race in America with the philosophical depth and Buddhist equanimity that distinguish all his work, arguing that the categories of racial identity, while politically necessary, are metaphysically false and that genuine liberation requires seeing through them. | 2020 | New York Review Books | English |
| Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 Johnson's critical study of Black American fiction since the Black Arts Movement argues that African American literature has been constrained by sociological and protest frameworks, and that the most important Black writers — Ellison, Wright, Morrison, Reed — have always been philosophical novelists working in a tradition that includes phenomenology, existentialism, and Eastern thought as much as racial politics. | 1988 | Indiana University Press | English |
| Dr. King's Refrigerator and Other Bedtime Stories Johnson's second story collection brings his philosophical and Buddhist sensibility to a range of subjects — a young Martin Luther King Jr. has an epiphany while raiding his refrigerator at midnight, a freed slave confronts the Buddha, a Black couple discovers that their pet is enlightened — each story using the 'bedtime story' form to explore questions of consciousness, compassion, and human connection. | 2005 | Scribner | English |
| Dreamer Johnson's novel imagines a body double for Martin Luther King Jr. — a man named Chaym Smith who physically resembles King but has lived a life of violence, addiction, and despair — and uses the doubling to explore the relationship between the public saint and the private man, between nonviolent philosophy and the rage that lurks beneath it. | 1998 | Scribner | English |
| Faith and the Good Thing Johnson's debut novel follows Faith Cross on a quest from rural Georgia to Chicago in search of 'the Good Thing' — a concept she cannot define but knows she needs — in a narrative that blends African American folk tradition, philosophical allegory, and naturalistic urban fiction into something unprecedented in American letters. | 1974 | Viking Press | English |
| Middle Passage Johnson's National Book Award-winning novel follows Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed slave and petty thief, who stows away on a slave ship in 1830 and is drawn into a voyage that becomes a metaphysical journey through the horrors of the slave trade, the mysteries of an African tribe, and the nature of consciousness itself — a picaresque philosophical adventure unlike anything else in American fiction. | 1990 | Atheneum | English |
| Oxherding Tale Johnson's first published novel — a philosophical slave narrative structured around the ten Zen oxherding pictures — follows Andrew Hawkins, the mixed-race son of a plantation master and a slave woman, as he escapes bondage and searches for enlightenment, in a work that fuses the African American literary tradition with Eastern philosophy and the picaresque novel. | 1982 | Indiana University Press | English |
| The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations Johnson's story collection ranges from the realistic to the fantastical — a faith healer who loses his gift, a slave whose education transforms him into something his master cannot control, a middle-class Black man who discovers martial arts — each tale exploring the transformation of consciousness through discipline, art, or crisis. | 1986 | Atheneum | English |
| The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling Johnson's memoir-cum-writing guide reflects on fifty years of literary practice — from his apprenticeship with John Gardner to his Buddhist meditation practice to the technical challenges of writing Middle Passage — offering practical wisdom about craft alongside philosophical reflections on why we tell stories and what stories do to us. | 2016 | Scribner | English |
| Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing Johnson's essay collection explores the intersection of Buddhism and African American experience — how meditation, mindfulness, and the Buddhist concept of interdependence illuminate questions of race, identity, and creative practice — written by a novelist who is also a dedicated Buddhist practitioner and a cartoonist who studied under Lawrence Lariar. | 2003 | Scribner | English |