There are references to ancient philosophers throughout Middle Passage as well as analogies from ancient Greek thought. Because of this, I will definitely have to stay within Middle Passage only, or at least only one area of the philosophy influencing his writing. Conner, Marc C. Nash, William R. Conner, eds. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Conner discusses Charles Johnson's writing, and specifically, in this article, Middle Passage itself.
But even more valuable to my research, Conner also relates Johnson's book to Toni Morrison's Beloved, stating that "Johnson's 'humor and intellectual musing,' unlike Morrison's narrative complexity, 'offers readers the familiar and the unthreatening'" qtd.
Conner refers readers to essays discussing the African-American experience in Johnson's works, including three of Johnson's own essays, emphasizing one of them: "Whole Sight: Notes on New Black Fiction. Johnson's characters are the vehicles for his philosophies.
He takes both a philosophically tragic, as well as comic, approach. It is a comedy in the Shakespearean way, in that it contains a love story that is thwarted by the mishaps and confused conclusions of a character. Conner includes powerful words from Johnson on his own work: "The characters who don't survive largely are those who cannot change.
The nouns die in my books and the verbs go on. I think life is a process, more process than product. This reveals much about his mind frame as an author and where his focus lies. Plutarch , Samurai practices, Christian tradition, Shakespeare, Ralph Ellison, transformation, character, tragedy, comedy, western thought, eastern thought, representation, America, suffering, and God are key to this essay. Little, Jonathan.
Columbia: U. These are absolute opposite views of how a racially heavy narrative should end. Davis, Geffrey, and Charles Johnson. Before beginning the discussion with the author himself, Davis outlines Johnson's many distinctions and awards, including his reception of the National Book Award for Middle Passage in , making him only the second male African-American since Ralph Ellison to do so.
The influences and outlets that contribute to Johnson's writing are numerous; among them are Buddhism, screenwriting, a PhD in philosophy, a shared bond with other black artists and writers, and his spirituality. As a writer of philosophical fiction, I saw my job as being one where I returned those perennial philosophical questions back to the drama—the sweat and struggle of everyday life where they arose in the first place" This personal delineation of his own creative process reveals his most basic intentions.
Johnson is so prolific and continuously refers to his own works as the interview addresses different topics, because he has already written on much of what is discussed. It is obvious that his writing is personal and deep, because he involves some of humanity's greatest inquiries including race, the human self, and the interconnectedness of all life.
Johnson strives to write in a way that he could "write book after book after book and someone could believe that they had been written by different people" because, quoting Whitman, "we contain within ourselves 'multitudes'" Johnson strives for richness and meaningful subject matter.
To hear about his writing in his own words is the most reliable but also the most beneficial and rewarding toward my research purposes. Fagel, Brian. MLA International Bibliography. Fagel, instead of looking at the book as a whole, focuses on deciphering one main character, Rutherford Calhoun, and his "middleness" throughout the book.
Within the crew on the ship, he is neither black nor white, just like the Middle Passage itself is an in-between place. The book is based around his inability to belong to one side or the other. With Calhoun, Johnson fills a place that is a "new imagining of what occurred in the gaps of a hegemonic historiography" by "representing a previously unrepresented viewpoint.
Johnson, through the artifice of Rutherford Calhoun's adventures aboard the Republic, imagines, for the first time, an interrupted space in African-American history" His approach to the character Calhoun defines his book; understanding this character through others' views of him is vital to understanding Middle Passage.
Rowell, Charles H. This interview goes over much more of his background than other sources, which is interesting and enlightening to read. Within it, Johnson notes that there was an earlier version of Middle Passage that he published years before the later one.
Reading the first copy would be beneficial, in order to see what changed and why between the first narrative and the second. Johnson discusses why he chose to be a writer despite his other successful artistic outlets such as screenwriting and comic books: "I reached a point--after so much relentless work as a visual artist--where there were things that I could not express in a single image, philosophical ideas I wanted to explore.
And the only way I could get at those complex ideas was through the medium of language: fiction, storytelling, or the philosophical essay" His appreciation of writing as a medium is essential to the way he employs his writing skills. He was taken in by the questions it prompted about what life would be like on such a ship and then researched it extensively over a number of years , The rest of the interview continues to talk about how he sees writing, both as an exploration and as a necessarily selfless process.
Johnson, Charles. Art Full Text H. In this essay, Charles Johnson addresses the paradigm employed when black writers write. He briefly outlines black American history, which a black American writer might be tempted to see as a default starting position. But Johnson upholds that there is more to be had from the black American experience than the negative past.
The past is important, but it has become outdated and nearly useless. Black Americans are now "full-fledged Americans," part of a great amalgamation; yet the lenses used in the pre-civil rights era still remain. This narrative now only gets in the way, in a time that is fortunately no longer aligned with the old messages: "our theories, our explanatory models, and the stories we tell ourselves can blind us to the obvious, leading us to see in matters of race only what we want to see based on our desires and political agendas.
Instead, black America needs new story-lines that explore and ask questions, broadening the conversation. This source is another interview, which is ideal because they are his words and direct opinions. He states that writers, including himself, are accountable for creating a reality that somewhat mirrors their own. But that depth is hard to create; in fact, it is impossible to represent reality in complete accuracy. All the writer can accomplish is what Johnson references as "just a finger pointing at the moon" From Publishers Weekly.
Charles Johnson is a highly prolific author, scholar, cartoonist and screenwriter. There are so many lessons and "wow moments" that cannot be realized in just one or two readings. Read more. Comment Report abuse. The transit of the Middle Passage is a clash between the learned acquired personality and the demands of the real Self; the first must die and be replaced by the person one wishes to be.
Although it can be a source of enormous anxiety, this death and rebirth is not an end, it is a transition in order to live one's full potential and arrive at the life-giving place of mature by: 4. Charles S. InRutherford Calhoun, an ex-slave from Illinois. It has the sub-title "The Caribbean Revisited". The title is a reference to the long and often terrifying transport of African slaves across the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.
It follows the. This study guide contains the following sections. Middle Passage: Selected full-text books and articles. A primary source is a work that is being studied, or that provides first-hand or direct evidence on a topic. Common types of primary sources include works of literature, historical documents, original philosophical writings, and religious texts. It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas and the West Indies, and items produced on the plantations back to Europe.
Illustrated books are a natural extension of [the] African oral tradition'' of storytelling, writes Caldecott Award—winning artist Tom Feelings. Here, in 64 powerful black-and-white paintings—some of them harshly realistic, others nightmarishly phantasmagoric—this noted artist tells a neglected part of the story of African-American slavery: the cruel journey known as the middle passage Author: Tom Feelings.
Middle Passage book. The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were forcibly transported to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves; the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials.
Charles Johnson.
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