Playing in the Dark

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Toni Morrison brings the genius of a master writer to this personal enquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Written with the artistic vision that has earned her a pre-eminent place among modern novelists, Playing in the Dark provides a daring new perspective that is sure to alter conventional notions about American literature. ‘Morrison’s reflections are vital not simply to conceptions of racial identity but also to those of American literary production . . . In these essays she examines “the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it” . . . Morrison’s daring – as a writer, a black woman – in addressing the issue in contemporary America is a measure of her integrity and courage’ Claire Messud, Guardian ‘The significance lies in the many permutations that her dazzling prose is able to work on the idea of white America’s “self-reflexive contemplation of fabricated, mythological Africanism” . . . Playing in the Dark is less a book for scholars than for the broad reading public – or those scholars, it should be added, who still doubt that race has been, and remains, a pervasive topic in the American imagination’ Eric J. Sundquist, Virginia Quarterly Review ‘Morrison’s real accomplishment is to recall the work of the true pioneers who first approached questions about race and imagination with urgency and rigorous open-mindedness’ New Republic