Only Son - Hardcover

Coplon, Jeff; Johnson, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446525529 ISBN 13: 9780446525527

Publisher: Warner Books, 2002

Synopsis

Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem, the only son of a man who worked hard to support his family, but also tyrannized them with violent outbursts and regular beatings. His childhood made Johnson tough and angry-and fueled his determination to be a successful black man in a white world. Eventually, he became one of the biggest names in New York television news. A man about town, the father of four, Johnson had money, fame, and success. Then something happened. His mother, whom he loved dearly, died in his arms, and his father was diagnosed with lung cancer soon after. Stunned, Johnson stepped back and realized that he had been so driven to succeed that he had forgotten the values-and the people-that truly mattered. But there was still time. So he quit his lucrative job and hard-won career to take care of the father who had tormented him so many years ago. ONLY SON is that story, the tale of a father and son who must untangle the bitter memories of their past in order to say goodbye...with love.

About this title

Reviews

When Johnson discovered that his father had lung cancer, he quit his high-profile anchor position at WNBC to be by his father's side. This momentous decision impels Johnson to explore his own life specifically, the intense love-hate dynamic between his abusive father, "Black Jack," and his alcoholic mother, Irene in a narrative frightening in its emotional intensity. Those seeking a charming memoir of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in the 1950s and '60s, or a juicy expose of television journalism, had best look elsewhere. This is a close-grained and often claustrophobic portrait of one family's close-to-tragic life. The outside world, filled with gangs, schemers and racists, offers no escape for the Johnsons, and thus seems unimportant in their suffocating drama. Johnson does not overly elaborate on the links between his family's harsh living circumstances and his mother's depression, his father's frustration or his own unrelenting ambition; instead, he evokes a child's incomprehension. "His outbursts bewildered me because I did nothing to provoke them. I didn't smoke or steal or get anyone pregnant. I came home at the appointed hour. I toed the line in every way.... My father was like a foreign crossword puzzle. I couldn't read the clues, much less solve the damn thing." Thrust into a caretaker position at much too young an age, Johnson shouldered too much of the family's guilty weight a role that explains his relentless ambition, but which also crippled him emotionally. "I was the son of an alcoholic and a sexual predator, yet their message came through: I was to be something! I didn't become a mugger or a drug addict. Some good things must have happened in our household, and my dad was a part of them, too." Johnson, writing with Coplon (who contributed to Tina Sinatra's My Father's Daughter), has created an impressive portrait of tenacity, fury and ambition, and reconciliation within an inescapable family frame.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Johnson, an award-winning broadcast journalist, recalls a harrowing childhood of abuse and his later struggle for forgiveness when his abusive father dies of cancer. Frustrated by the restrictions imposed on him by racial discrimination, John Johnson Sr. turned on his wife and son, pummeling them into submission. Johnson's mother provided escape from his father's brutality and the poverty of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem through encouragement, art, and frequent visits to museums. Johnson describes his father as a "foreign crossword puzzle" who was impossible to understand: one minute supportive, the next explosively violent. Unable to protect his mother, Johnson eventually escapes completely, via college and career. Toughened by the abuse at his father's hand, Johnson brings steely determination to his broadcast career. But he is never far removed from the abusive triangle his family has knit, and he stumbles in his own marriages and relationships. The death of his mother, his greatest fan, forces Johnson to deal directly with his father, as they both struggle to get beyond their troubled past. Vanessa Bush
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Edition details

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446525529
• ISBN 13: 9780446525527
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256