National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson reflects on the joys of being a grandparent in this warm, inspiring collection of wisdom and life lessons--the ideal gift for any new parent or grandparent An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has held numerous impressive titles over the course of his incomparable career. Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his ...
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National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson reflects on the joys of being a grandparent in this warm, inspiring collection of wisdom and life lessons--the ideal gift for any new parent or grandparent An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has held numerous impressive titles over the course of his incomparable career. Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his most important role yet: grandparent. In Grand , Johnson shares stories from his life with his six-year-old grandson, Emery, weaving in advice and life lessons that stand the test of time. "Looking at the problems I see in the world around me," Johnson writes, "I realize that there are so many things I want to say to him about the goodness and beauty that life offers. What are the perennial truths that I can impart to Emery that might make his journey through life easier or more rewarding?" Johnson shares these truths and more, offering profound meditations on family, race, freedom and creativity. Joyful, lucid and deeply comforting, Grand is Johnson at his most accessible and profound, an indispensable compendium for new grandparents and growing grandchildren alike, from one of America's most revered thinkers.
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I read Charles Johnson's National Book Award winning novel "Middle Passage" (1990) and wanted to know more of the author. In a trip to the local library, I found this short book, "Grand: Grandparent's Wisdom for a Happy Life" (2020) in which Johnson( b. 1948) shares the experiences he has had and the efforts towards wisdom he has made over a productive, changing life, with his eight-year old grandson, Emery. The book has an immediacy and intimacy of tone as Johnson reflects upon his own life and on the life of Emery. The author's love for his grandchild comes through, but the book speaks personally to its readers as well. I have two lovely grandchildren both of whom are older than Emery. Unlike Johnson's relationship with Emery, my grandchildren live a long distance away. Still, I thought of my grandchildren in reading Johnson's book and of the love and experiences of my life that I might impart to them.
I was interested in exploring Johnson's work further in part because he is a philosopher with a strong literary bent and a Buddhist. Philosophy and Buddhism come through strongly in Johnson's reflections. But there is much that is more concrete and particular. Johnson tells his grandson a great deal about his own early life and his responses to it. He discusses change and how the America in which Emery will grow up differs from his own. And Johnson focuses on his experiences and on Emery's as a black American and on the nature of race. Johnson also discusses with Emery many of the books and people, from those who may be unfamiliar such as the Indian spiritual teacher and writer Eknath Eswaran (1910 -- 1999), through figures such as the African American author James Weldon Johnson (1871 -- 1938) and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Johnson writes to Emery in ten short chapters, each of which explores a broad theme that must be developed and understood throughout life. It begins with a chapter on the Socratic injunction, "Know Thyself". In chapter 3, Johnson tells Emery about the Sanskrit teaching "You are that" and reflects upon the profundity of this enigmatic saying for contemporary America. In a chapter titled "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life" after a sermon by Martin Luther King, Johnson discusses his own lengthy efforts to study and learn from King as a spiritual teacher. In chapter 7, "Open Mouth, Already a Mistake" Johnson gives young Emery some elementary lessons in logic and in the abuses of speech. Finally, in the concluding chapter "To Love is to Live", Johnson reflects upon the different kinds of love, from friendship to erotic passion as they relate to a young child who, as yet, has seen little of the world.
The short essays show a great deal of depth, a lightness of touch, and humor. Johnson's reflections are not within the ken of an eight year old boy but instead must be lived with through time. The book speaks to the boy, to the readers and I think to Johnson himself. I thought of Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-prize winning novel "Gilead" in reading Johnson's book. Robinson's main character is the Reverend John Ames, an aging, rural American minister who is terminally ill. He
writes to his young son, a child of his old age, trying to pass along, to both his child and to himself some of what he feels of value that he has learned during his life.
I enjoyed getting to know Charles Johnson better through reading "Grand"and to think about my own grandchildren and about the nature of a thoughtful, reflective life.
