Oxherding Tale

Son of a slave and a white woman, Andrew Hawkins tries to find freedom as well as a true understanding of his spiritual identity

Literature & Fiction

Johnson, Charles Richard

United States

Indiana Univ. Pr

“Memorable . . . a daring, extravagant novel.” – The New Yorker    By the National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage   One night in the antebellum South, a slaveowner and his African-American butler stay up to all hours drinking Madeira and playing cards. Finally, too besotted to face their respective wives, they drunkenly decide to switch places in each other’s beds. The result is a hilarious imbroglio and an offspring, Andrew Hawkins, whose life becomes the Oxherding Tale, a deliciously funny, bitterly ironic account of slavery, racism, oppression – and the African-American spirit – in the Old South. Through sexual escapades, picaresque adventures, and philosophical inquiry, young Hawkins walks the line between white and black worlds and comments wryly on marriage, human nature, slave catchers, and culture along the way.   “A wonderfully funny, erotica, bittersweet story of the hero’s travels from slavery to freedom.”—Chicago Sun Times  

Grove/Atlantic

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations

Plume

“Memorable . . . a daring, extravagant novel.” – The New Yorker By the National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage One night in the antebellum South, a slaveowner and his African-American butler stay up to all hours drinking Madeira and playing cards. Finally, too besotted to face their respective wives, they drunkenly decide to switch places in each other’s beds. The result is a hilarious imbroglio and an offspring, Andrew Hawkins, whose life becomes the Oxherding Tale, a deliciously funny, bitterly ironic account of slavery, racism, oppression – and the African-American spirit – in the Old South. Through sexual escapades, picaresque adventures, and philosophical inquiry, young Hawkins walks the line between white and black worlds and comments wryly on marriage, human nature, slave catchers, and culture along the way. “A wonderfully funny, erotica, bittersweet story of the hero’s travels from slavery to freedom.”—Chicago Sun Times

Charles Johnson, the National Book Award-winning author of the bestselling Middle Passage, published his stunning first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, in 1974. At its release, Black World called it one of the great American novels of this century...unqualifiedly good and extraordinarily beautiful. Faith and the Good Thing is the haunting fable of Faith Cross, a black Southern girl whose quest for the good in life comes to represent our shared human adventure from innocence to identity. Faith is told by her dying mother, Girl, you get yourself a good thing, although she has no idea what that is. As we follow her journey from the traditional Southern Baptist world of her mother's funeral to a swamp witch's lair to a life of prostitution and loveless marriage in Chicago, we relive the history of twentieth-century black America, annotated with philosophic insight into the nature of identity, justice, and our common place in the universe along the way. Told in the style of black folklore and replete with voodoo werewitches, hypocritical Pentecostal preachers, wise street bums, and philosophy from the ancient Nubian lore to Plato, Descartes, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, Faith and the Good Thing burgeons with riches. Like Voltaire's Candide with a touch of de Sade's Justine, or the protagonist of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, Johnson's Faith is an innocent who searches through the horrors of this world to terrible knowledge and vital understanding. Publishers Weekly hailed this novel as so original, so imaginative, and so exciting in what it has to say about the black woman's experience in America that it is a reading experience unlike anything else in a longtime. It will dazzle Johnson's new and loyal fans who are discovering his early work for the first time.

Faith and the Good Thing

Contemporary

Atheneum Books

In Search of a Voice (The National Book Week Lectures)

History & Criticism

Library of Congress

Cartoons by a black college student exploit the Negro stereotypes

Black Humor

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Johnson Pub Co Inc

In the tradition of the successful companions to the critically acclaimed PBS documentaries Eyes on the Prize and Vietnam: A History, Africans in America is a riveting and unsettling work about slavery -- America's Achilles heel. This powerful audiobook is the companion to PBS's corresponding documentary, a four-part, six-hour series created by an award-winning team at WGBH-TV in Boston.

Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery

History

Smith, Patricia

WGBH Series Research Team

Africa

MacMillan Audio

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Books by Johnson, Charles Richard