Toni Morrison

Examines the effect of a racially divided society on ninteenth century American writings, and discusses works by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Playing in the Dark

biddy

Statements to the contrary, insisting on the meaninglessness of race to the American identity, are themselves full of meaning.

The world does not become raceless or will not become unracialized by assertion. The act of enforcing racelessness in literary discourse is itself a racial act. Pouring rhetorical acid on the fingers of a black hand may indeed destroy the prints, but not the hand. Besides, what happens in that violent, self-serving act of erasure to the hands, the fingers, the fingerprints of the one who does the pouring? Do they remain acid-free?

whiteness and the literary imagination

Playing in the dark

this was a tough read. morrison uses intelligent language and it was hard for me to follow what she was talking about the majority of the time. i’m in no way criticizing her, quite the opposite — i’m just not able to comprehend it. 

i did like her commentary on how whiteness exists because of oppression and blackness. how the subjugation and control of black people gives meaning to what whiteness is and what power is. how basically one can’t exist without the other (at this point).

Ezra Alie

Daryl Houston

A lot of the book was a bit of a slog for me, sort of vague and presented as if rearing up for a deeper dive that I knew, in such a short book, would not be forthcoming. I really liked the section in which Morrison did a bit of a deeper dive into some of Hemingway's work, and I would have been pleased to read more particulars like what she gave in that section to illustrate the more abstract things she said early in the book.

Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

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