New Releases by charles johnson

From the National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage, a fearless fictional portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his pivotal moment in American history. Set against the tensions of Civil Rights era America, Dreamer is a remarkable fictional excursion into the last two years of Martin Luther King Jr.''s life, when the political and personal pressures on this country''s most preeminent moral leader were the greatest. While in Chicago for his first northern campaign against poverty and inequality, King encounters Chaym Smith, whose startling physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. Matthew Bishop, a civil rights worker and loyal follower of King, is given the task of training the smart and deeply cynical Smith for the job. In doing so, Bishop must face the issue of what makes one man great while another man can only stand in for greatness. Provocative, heartfelt, and masterfully rendered, Charles Johnson confirms yet again that he is one of the great treasures of modern American literature. Dr. Charles Johnson is a novelist, screenwriter, essayist, professional cartoonist and the Pollock Professor of English at the University of Washington. He is the author of more than sixteen books, including the PEN/Faulkner nominated story collection The Sorcerer''s Apprentice and the novel Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award.

From National Book Award–winning author Charles Johnson comes a sly, witty, and insightful collection of short stories exploring issues of race and identity. In “Sweet Dreams,” a Kafkaesque tale is set in a world where dreams are taxed—a reality that leads to a man and his dreamlife being audited. In “Cultural Relativity,” a young woman falls in love with the son of the president of an African nation—but is forbidden to ever kiss him. A deeply humane story, “Dr. King''s Refrigerator” offers a remarkable glimpse into Martin Luther King Jr.''s life and his refrigerator. “Kwoon” is a graceful and illuminating story about a martial arts teacher on Chicago''s South Side. Compassionate and amusing, thought-provoking and richly imagined, Dr. King''s Refrigerator and Other Bedtime Stories is a wonderful and compelling collection from one of America''s most beloved authors.

Stirring and triumphant photographs taken by "LIFE" photographer Adelman evoke the heady days of the Civil Rights Movement when America faced its worst nightmare only a generation ago. Concluding on a note of celebration, the photographs reveal ever-increasing signs of racial reconciliation.

Faith Cross, a beautiful and purely innocent young black woman, is told by her dying mother to go and get herself "a good thing." Thus begins an extraordinary pilgrim''s progress that takes Faith from the magic and mysticism of the rural South to the promises and perils of modern-day Chicago. It is an odyssey that propels Faith from the degradation of prostitution, drugs, and drink into a faceless middle-class reality, and finally into a searing tragedy that ironically leads to the discovery of the real Good Thing. National Book Award-winner Charles Johnson''s first novel, originally published in 1974, puts the life-affirming soul of the African-American experience at the summit of American storytelling.

Short stories inspired by the history of slavery in America, by the National Book Award–winning author of Middle Passage. 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. Now, famed novelist Charles Johnson, whose Middle Passage won the National Book Award, presents a dozen tales of the effects and experience of slavery, each based on historical fact, and each about those Africans who arrived on our shores in shackles. From Martha Washington’s management of her slaves, bequeathed to her at the death of the first president, to a boy chained in the bowels of a ship plying the infamous passage from Africa to the South laden with human cargo, from a lynching in Indiana to a hunter of escaped slaves searching the Boston market for his quarry, from an early Quaker meeting exploring resettlement in Africa to the day after Emancipation—the voices, terrors, and savagery of slavery come vividly and unforgettably to life. “[These] highly detailed short historical fictions bring to life this most shameful period in our nation’s history.” —The New York Times Book Review

This work reaches across the colour line to examine how race, gender, class and individual subjectivity shaped the lives of black and white women in the 19th- and 20th-century American South.

Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.

This is a print of the 1927 reissued 4th edition of A General History of the Pirates - enhanced by the Arthur L. Hayward''s editorial touches.

Little is known about the many achievements of African American guardsmen in U.S. history from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. This detailed account thus fills an important gap in our knowledge about the establishment of African American militias in 1877 and their service in wartime and peacetime until the integration of the National Guard in 1950. This careful study of extensive primary and secondary sources is intended for military historians and for all who want to know more about African American contributions to the defense of our nation. Following a short introduction providing some historical background, the study launches into a description of the establishment of African American militia organizations in and about 1877 and their involvement in the Spanish American War and in quelling civil disturbances and disasters up to 1914. The history deals next with the service of African American guardsmen units in World War I, their work in the years between the wars, and their involvement in World War II. The story ends with a description of the initial reorganization of these units and their integration into the National Guard in 1949 and 1950. A lengthy bibliography of primary and secondary sources is useful as well in pointing to the role of African American militias and guardsmen in the history of this important period.

In these eight fables and allegorical tales, the author writes of the events of this world as influenced by spiritual or strongly cultural forces.

Dr. Stanley brought to his doctoral research at Harvard a superior capacity to use Chinese sources, a background of many years'' experience on the Chinese scene, and an intense interest in the detailed facts of Chinese institutional and economic change in the late nineteenth century.