Dr. King’s Refrigerator and Other Bedtime Stories was published by Scribner in 2005. The title story imagines Martin Luther King Jr. as a young theology student in Boston, unable to sleep, raiding his refrigerator at 2 AM and experiencing, through the simple act of examining the food on his shelves, a sudden insight into the interdependence of all things — the farmers, the truckers, the store clerks, the entire network of human cooperation that placed each item in his kitchen. The insight prefigures the philosophical foundations of King’s nonviolent movement.
The other stories range across Johnson’s characteristic territory: “Kwoon” follows a kung fu instructor who discovers that his best student is using martial arts for violence rather than discipline. “The Gift of the Osuo” reimagines a traditional African tale about a man who receives a magical gift and must learn how to use it without being destroyed by it. “Cultural Relativity” places a freed slave in conversation with the Buddha, creating a dialogue between African American experience and Buddhist philosophy.
Johnson calls these “bedtime stories” with deliberate irony: they are formally simple (short, clearly structured, resolved) but philosophically demanding, and the apparent simplicity is itself a philosophical choice — Johnson believes, with the Buddhists, that the deepest truths are often the simplest.
Collecting Dr. King’s Refrigerator
First edition (Scribner, New York, 2005): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $10–$25
- Very good/very good: $5–$12