Ethelbert Miller interviews Nibir K. Ghosh

Compassion is my art
-- Grace A. Ali

God makes stars. It's up to producers to find them.
  -Samuel Goldwyn

MY GUEST IS NIBIR K. GHOSH. HE IS THE EDITOR OF THE NEW BOOK, CHARLES JOHNSON EMBRACING THE WORLD.

Q. WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO THE WORK OF CHARLES JOHNSON?    

1. Nine years ago, when the Public Affairs Section of U.S. Embassy, New Delhi informed me that Charles Johnson—author of Middle Passage, Oxherding Tale, Dreamer etc., a MacArthur Fellow and winner of the National Book Award—was visiting India on a lecture tour, I was thrilled by the prospect of interviewing him against the backdrop of the Taj Mahal.  My enthusiasm did not last long as his visit did not ultimately materialize on account of the Iraq war.  Perhaps Fate had ordained that we would meet not in Agra, the city of Sulahakul, but in Seattle from where Johnson proclaims to the world the imperatives of embracing a standpoint that calls for an amalgamation of multidisciplinary and multicultural perspectives.

The chance to meet this celebrity came when I was awarded the Senior Fulbright Fellowship to work at the University of Washington, Seattle during 2003-04 on a project that was concerned with Contemporary African American Writings with special reference to the works of Charles Johnson.

I was attracted to Charles Johnson as a writer when I got to read his profile marked by amazing diversity of interests. I thought it was noteworthy that in a conflict-ridden world whose belief in multiculturalism, in flesh and spirit, made a lot of sense.

Q. WHERE SHOULD WE PLACE THE WORK OF CHARLES JOHNSON WHEN EXAMINING WORLD LITERATURE?

 While examining World Literature we can place Charles Johnson at the crucial meeting point of philosophy and fiction. Through the corpus of his fictional and non-fictional writings, Johnson combines philosophy and folklore, martial art and Buddhism, to provide incisive insights into the new frontiers of the African American experience that calls for an amalgamation of multidisciplinary and multicultural perspectives. What is significant is that he not only loves to address the symptoms of change in terms of acute identity crisis but also tries to prepare the aesthetic ground for such a change.

Q. WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT THE NEW BOOK, CHARLES JOHNSON EMBRACING THE WORLD?

The erudite articles, insightful essays, vibrant poems and stories, glowing tributes and animate interviews in this memorable volume not only address multifarious dimensions of the Charles Johnson canon but also bring into bold relief the magnetic appeal of  a veritable activist relentlessly engaged in making the world a better place to live in. Also included in this volume are essays and stories by Charles Johnson that illumine variant issues and concerns ranging from the ambivalence of the American Dilemma to delineating the meaning of Barack Obama, besides displaying his innate ability to contend with conflicting forces by celebrating life in the manner of Buddha, DuBois, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. If Johnson admires America for being the great country where “passions define possibilities” and where “no individual or group, white or black, could tell me not to dream,” he is no less enamoured by India: “its beauty, antiquity, breath-taking art and remarkable people, the peace I feel instantly when my mind drifts to the Buddhist Dharma or Hinduism, that great democracy of Being.” Above all, the book is bound to create an audience in this important region of the world where interest in subaltern themes is on the rise.

Q.  WHAT NEW PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON?

4. Currently, there are two projects that I am working on: one is a book on Rabindranath Tagore as a Cultural Ambassador. It will be in the form of a tribute to the multicultural spirit of the Nobel Laureate in the 150th year of his birth. The other project is on Gandhi and his soulforce mission.

I may mention here that my focus is on the forthcoming issue of Re-Markings that marks the completion of ten years for the journal with its twentieth issue in September 2011. In the words of Professor Jonah Raskin of Sonoma State University, California: "The world is a place of conflicts and clashes, but it is also a place of confluences and Re-Markings helps to further the dialogue between different cultures around the world. It aids communication around the world and it has moved with the times and with the technological changes in the past decade as evidenced by the website which is impressive and professional. I hope to continue to work with Nibir and with Re-Markings and I hope that the journal has been shaped in beneficial ways by my contributions just as I have been shaped and influenced in beneficial ways by my association with the journal." 

Courtesy: THE   E  MAG, E. Ethelbert Miller