More recently, some critics accused Alice Walker of unfairly attacking black men in her novel "The Color Purple" (1982). In his updated 1995 introduction to his novel "Oxherding Tale", Charles Johnson criticized Walker's novel for its negative portrayal of African-American males: "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." Walker responded in her essays "The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult" (1998).