Charles R. Johnson (born 1948 in Evanston, Illinois) is an American scholar and author of novels, short stories, and essays. Johnson, an African-American, has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Middle Passage and Dreamer.
Johnson first came to prominence in the 1960s as a political cartoonist, at which time he was also involved in radical politics. In 1970, he published a collection of cartoons, and this led ...
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Charles R. Johnson (born 1948 in Evanston, Illinois) is an American scholar and author of novels, short stories, and essays. Johnson, an African-American, has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Middle Passage and Dreamer.
Johnson first came to prominence in the 1960s as a political cartoonist, at which time he was also involved in radical politics. In 1970, he published a collection of cartoons, and this led to a television series about cartooning on PBS. Johnson's first novel, Faith and the Good Thing was published in 1974. In 1990, he was awarded the National Book Award for Middle Passage.
Johnson received his B.S. and M.A. from Southern Illinois University in 1971 and 1973, respectively; he got his Ph.D. in philosophy from SUNY-Stony Brook in 1988.
In 1977, Johnson became a Buddhist.
Johnson's mentor, early in his writing career, was the writer John Gardner. In an interview, Johnson wrote, of Gardner:
"Gardner, as I’ve said often, was the...
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