{"product_id":"charles-johnsons-fiction-william-r-nash-9780252027734","title":"Charles Johnson's Fiction","description":"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 \u003ci\u003eCharles Johnson's Fiction, \u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Nash examines Johnson's short stories, novels--\u003ci\u003eFaith and the Good Thing, Oxherding Tale, Middle Passage, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Dreamer\u003c\/i\u003e--and the nonfiction work \u003ci\u003eBeing and Race.\u003c\/i\u003e 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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e 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. \u003ci\u003eCharles Johnson's Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e also includes eight of Johnson's cartoons published in \u003ci\u003eBlack Humor\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eHalf-Past Nation Time\u003c\/i\u003e in the early 1970s. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e William R. Nash\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0252027736\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780252027734\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Illinois Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/27\/2002\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 240\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.10lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.82h x 6.68w x 0.91d","brand":"William R. Nash","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":49096663892223,"sku":"9780252027734","price":39.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/charles-johnsons-fiction-william-r-nash-9780252027734","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}