life. Johnson posits an exact look-alike to King, a
man named Chaym Smith who was born on ex-
actly the same day. Unlike King, Smith is a ne’er-
do-well and has studied Buddhism in the Far
East. Smith begins the novel as a failed man who
is extremely envious of the black middle class as
typified by King, which Johnson clearly intends
as a comment on racial politics in contemporary
America. Narrator Matthew Bishop, commenting
on the death of King, says, “Exalting the ethnic
ego proved far less challenging than King’s belief
in the beloved community.” Dreamer is largely the
story of Smith’s journey from Cain-like envy, but
it is also about Bishop’s decision to take up the
work of reeducating America about the way to be-
loved community.
Johnson has published three collections of
short stories. Stories from The Sorcerer’s Appren-
tice: Tales and Conjurations (1986) have received
the most critical comment. “Exchange Value” in-
vestigates the ways in which the hunger to acquire
material goods feeds itself and grows through the
acquisition of material goods until the possessor
becomes himself the possession of the so-called
possessions. This philosophical parable is comi-
cally dramatized by the plight of two thieves who
break into the wrong apartment and end up ac-
quiring not only the owner’s valuables but also
her hunger for them. Other stories in this volume
extend the dimensions of the imaginary African
tribe, the Allmuseri, that Johnson describes most
fully in Middle Passage. Johnson’s second collec-
tion, Soulcatcher and Other Stories (2001) brings
together stories Johnson wrote for a WGBH public
television series that has been published in book
form as Africans in America: America’s Journey
through Slavery (1998). Frederick Douglass, Mar-
tha Washington, and numerous fictional charac-
ters animate these stories. Dr. King’s Refrigerator
and Other Bedtime Stories (2005) includes occa-
sional stories connected by the bedtime theme.
Johnson’s two most important nonfiction
books are Being and Race and Turning the Wheel:
Essays on Buddhism and Writing (2003). The first
develops Johnson’s interests in the philosophical
context of fictional form and technique as ap-
prehended from a phenomenological viewpoint.
This book is at once a philosophical argument, a
literary history of black American fiction, and a
writer’s manual of sorts. Turning the Wheel collects
essays on Buddhism, cultural politics, and literary
art. The phrase “turning the wheel” signifies teach-
ing in Buddhist traditions, and this book is at once
Johnson’s most explicit declaration of his religious
beliefs and his most public, engaged book.
Johnson has also written numerous intro-
ductions, reviews, and uncollected essays. For
his screenplay Booker, he won the Writers Guild
award (1985) and the Prix Jeunesse Award in 1987.
In addition to National Endowment for the Arts,
Rockefeller, and Guggenheim awards, he has won
the National Book Award (1990) and the MacAr-
thur Genius Fellowship (1998). He is currently
the Pollock Professor of English at University of
Washington.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Byrd, Rudolph P. I Call Myself an Artist: Writings by
and about Charles Johnson. Bloomington: Univer-
sity of Indiana Press, 1999.
Nash, Will R. Charles Johnson’s Fiction. Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 2002.
Selzer, Linda Furgerson. “Charles Johnson’s ‘Exchange
Value’: Signifyin(g) on Marx.” Massachusetts Re-
view 42, no. 2 (1995): 253–268.
John Whalen-BridgeJohnson, Georgia Douglas (1880–1966)
Georgia Douglas Johnson, renowned HARLEM RE-
NAISSANCE poet, playwright, and mentor, was born
in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1896 she graduated from
Atlanta University, and in 1906 she married Henry
Lincoln Johnson, an attorney. Johnson published
her first poem in 1916. She divided her time be-
tween writing, being a homemaker, teaching, and
serving as a civil service clerk; she even worked as
commissioner of conciliation for the Department
of Labor. She also acted as a mentor for other Afri-
can-American writers and encouraged a dialogue
between writers by hosting a literary salon in her
home. Many African-American artists referred to
Douglas Johnson’s home as the “Halfway-House”Johnson, Georgia Douglas 279