I Call Myself an Artist: Writings By and About Charles Johnson

As a literary and intellectual heir to Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, Charles Johnson articulates in his work the struggles of Africa Americans' lives without denying its fundamental Americanness. This book, compiled by Emory University Professor Rudolph P. Byrd, contains 25 years' worth of Johnson's essays, poetry, cartoons, reviews, novel excerpts, interviews, and critiques. In the autobiographical essay that titles the book, Johnson cites the influences of Sartre, Malraux, and Melville in his attempt to forge a "genuinely black American fiction." In other works, Johnson investigates the worldwide image of black people, takes on Spike Lee and Dinesh D'Souza, and illuminates Martin Luther King's faded dream. Other writers--including Stanley Crouch, Vera Kutzinski, and Ashraf H.A. Rushdy--examine the richness and depth of Johnson's fictional characters and their cultural and human adversities. "As a symbol and agent of the process of communication, of communion," Byrd writes, "Johnson is a writer of our age whose message will deliver him, whole and engaging, to readers whose interests are as varied and whose questions are as urgent as his own." --Eugene Holley Jr.