Rudolph P. Byrd (1953-2011) was Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the Program of African American Studies at Emory University. He is author of Jean Toomer's Years With Gurdjieff and Black Philosophical Fiction: The Art and Imagination of Charles Johnson. He is also the editor of Essentials by Jean Toomer and Generations in Black and White: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten from the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection.
Preface, Rudolph P. Byrd
Part I, Autobiographical Acts
Charles Johnson: An Autobiographical Essay, Charles Johnson
Part II, Fiction
First Words: Excerpts from the Early Fiction, Charles Johnson
Literary Outtakes: More from Oxherding Tale, (1990) Charles Johnson
Kwoon, (1991) Charles Johnson
The Writer's Notebook, (1992) Charles Johnson
The Work of the World, Charles Johnson
Part III, Essays and Addresses
Philosophy and Black Fiction, (1980) Charles Johnson
Whole Sight: Notes on New Black Fiction, (1984) Charles Johnson
Where Fiction and Philosophy Meet, (1988) Charles Johnson
Novelists of Memory, (1989) Charles Johnson
A Phenomenology of the Black Body, (1993) Charles Johnson
On Writers and Writing, (1993) Charles Johnson
Black Images and Their Global Impact, (1993) Charles Johnson
Northwestern Commencement Address, (1994) Charles Johnson
What is Man, (1995) Charles Johnson
Journal Entries on the Death of John Gardner, (1995) Charles Johnson
Part IV, Reviews and Cultural Criticism
One Meaning of "Mo' Better Blues," (1991) Charles Johnson
Black Fiction's Father Figure, (1991) Charles Johnson
Spike Lee Does the Right Thing, (1992) Charles Johnson
Inventing Africa, (1992) Charles Johnson
Widening the Racial Divide, (1995) Charles Johnson
The King We Left Behind, (1996) Charles Johnson
Part V, Charlie's Pad
A Capsule History of Blacks in Comics, Charles Johnson
Selected Cartoons
Part VI, Interviews/Conversations
An Interview with Charles Johnson, (1993) Jonathan Little
Critic, Not Cynic: Charles Johnson and Stanley Crouch (1995)
VII, Reading Charles Johnson
On Faith and the Good Thing
John McComber, Philosophy and Hydrology: Situating Discourse in Charles Johnson's Faith and the Good Thing
On Oxherding Tale
Stanley Crouch, Charles Johnson: Free At Last!
Vera M. Kutzinski, Johnson Revises Johnson: Oxherding Tale and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Jeffrey B. Leak, Wrestling With Desire: Slavery and Masculinities in Oxherding Tale
Rudolph P. Byrd, Oxherding Tale and Siddhartha: Philosophy, Fiction, and the Emergence of a Hidden Tradition
On Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970
Michael Boccia, Charles Johnson and the Philosopher's Ghost: The Phenomenological Thinking in Being and Race
On The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Rudolph P. Byrd, It Rests By Changing: Process in The Sorcerer's Apprentice
On Middle Passage
Daniel M. Scott, Interrogating Identity: Appropriation and Transformation in Middle Passage
Ashraf H.A. Rushdy, The Phenomenology of the Allumersi: Charles Johnson and the Subject of the Narrative of Slavery
Bibliography