Born in Evanston, Illinois, Johnson began his career as a cartoonist.  Under the tutelage of cartoonist Lawrence Lariar, he saw his work published by the time he was seventeen years old. His two collections of cartoons were acclaimed for their subtle but pointed satire of race relations, and their success led to "Charlie's Pad," a 1971 series on public television that Johnson created, coproduced, and hosted.  As an undergraduate at Southern Illinois University, Johnson studied with novelist and literary theorist John Gardner, whose conception of "moral fiction"-demanding from the author a near-fanatical commitment to technique, imagination, and ethics-deeply impressed Johnson.  Johnson's first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, was published in 1974 when the author was studying for this Ph.D. in phenomenology and literary aesthetics at the State University of New York at Stonybrook.

Oxherding Tale

Format: Paperback, 176pp.
ISBN: 0452275032
Publisher: Dutton/Plume
Pub. Date: August 1995
Edition Desc: REPRINT

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.

Magnificent, and like everything Charles Johnson does, deep and funny. As a writer, he goes places few of us dare to go. He's one of the most gifted writers I've read and is an inspiration to all writers. — James McBride

From The Publisher: 
Initially conceived as an exploration of "the plight of the black male in the United States," Black Men Speaking is that and more. It gives expression to a range of issues - cultural, economic, psychological, religious, and personal - as seen by a remarkable group of black men - novelists, a well-known artist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, a doctor, an editor, an academic, a famous musician, and a group of ordinary citizens from Harlem. Powerful voices give us powerful images and powerful messages.