Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 was published by Indiana University Press in 1988. The book is Johnson’s manifesto for a new approach to African American literature — one that takes seriously the philosophical dimensions of Black writing rather than reducing it to sociology, protest, or identity politics.
Johnson, trained as a philosopher, reads Black fiction through the lens of phenomenology and existentialism: the “being” of the title refers to Heidegger’s Dasein, the lived experience of existing in the world as a particular kind of being. Race, in Johnson’s analysis, is not a fixed identity but a mode of being-in-the-world — a set of experiences, perceptions, and interpretive frameworks that shape consciousness without determining it. The best Black writers, he argues, have always known this: Ellison’s Invisible Man is a phenomenological investigation, not a protest novel; Wright’s Native Son is an existentialist parable, not a sociological case study.
The book includes detailed readings of writers from the Black Arts Movement (Baraka, Reed, Morrison, Walker, Gaines) and argues for an expanded canon that includes the influence of Eastern philosophy, martial arts, and contemplative practice on Black thought. Johnson’s critical voice is confident and sometimes combative — he challenges the Black literary establishment’s tendency to privilege racial authenticity over philosophical depth.
Collecting Being and Race
First edition (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1988): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20