Teacher

Charles Johnson



Charles R. Johnson is an American writer, philosopher, academic, and artist whose award-winning work ranges from African-American philosophical fiction to nonfiction in the areas of literature, writing, African American studies, philosophy, and Eastern spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhism.

Charles Johnson
FindCenter Video Image

It’s Life as I See it: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980

“An important and groundbreaking collection, bringing together important voices and biographical context illustrating four decades of Black perspectives on everything from daily life to the Civil Rights Movement.

book
Dan Nadel (editor), Ronald Wimberly (afterword), Charles Johnson (contributor), Kerry James Marshall (designer)
2024
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Soulcatcher and Other Stories—Twelve Powerful Tales about Slavery

Twelve stories about the African experience of slavery in America, by the National Book Award-winning novelist. Nothing has had as profound an effect on American life as slavery. For blacks and whites alike, the experience has left us with a conflicted and contradictory history.

book
Charles Johnson
2001
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery

The companion volume to a public television series, this extraordinary examination of slavery in America features a four-part history by poet and performance artist Patricia Smith and a dozen fictional narratives by National Book Award–winning novelist Charles Johnson.

book
Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, WGBH Series Research Team
1999
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra

Jan Willis was among the first Westerners to encounter exiled Tibetan teachers abroad in the late sixties, instantly finding her spiritual and academic home.

book
Jan Willis, Charles Johnson (foreword), Janet Gyatso (foreword)
2020
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice

This wide and varied collection of essays, reviews, and short stories offers incisive views on politics, race, and Buddhism. Johnson notes that in his life the two activities that have anchored him and reinforce each other are creative production and spiritual practice.

book
Charles Johnson
2014
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing

"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.

book
Charles Johnson
2007
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image
01:30:05

Word Works: Charles Johnson on Storytelling and the Alpha Narrative

In his essay "Storytelling and the Alpha Narrative," Johnson writes, "All technique, craft, and literary theory we accumulate as writers must be in the service of that most deceptively simple and yet most difficult of achievements - delivering undamaged a whopping good, imaginative, and original...

video
Charles Johnson
2018
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970

Charles Johnson approaches contemporary black literature through the lens of phenomenology, drawing on philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, Satre, and Dufrenne to address the aesthetic and epistemological questions surrounding the black experience as expressed by Black American authors.

book
Charles Johnson
1990
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image

Charles Johnson: by the Book

The author of “Middle Passage” and, most recently, “The Way of the Writer” agrees with Sartre: “If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.”

article
The New York Times
2016
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Video Image
14:36

Charles Johnson Interview Part 2

January 28, 2010 - Renowned Author and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Charles Johnson visits with American Book Review Publisher Dr. Jeffrey DiLeo.

video
Charles Johnson
2010
FindCenter AddIcon
FindCenter Loader Image

EXPLORE RELATED TOPICS

EXPLORE RELATED TEACHERS

UP NEXT

Jan Willis

Photo Credit: Photograph by Charles Johnson / Distributed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported license