Conversations With Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series) [Hardcover]

Toni Morrison (Author), Danille Kathleen Taylor-Guthrie (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Series: Literary Conversations Series | Publication Date: June 1994

This is a collection of interviews, beginning in 1974, with Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison describes herself as an African-American writer, and these essays show her to be an artist whose creativity is intimately linked with her African-American experience.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi (Txt) (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0878056912
• ISBN-13: 978-0878056910
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,541,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important companion to Playing in the Dark, July 3, 1999

By 

Roberta Branca ([e-mail]) (Somerville, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations) (Paperback)

The interviews in this book illuminate the forces behind Morrison's scholarly theories about the role of race in American literature. Anyone who has read "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination" will immediately recognize key themes in many of these interviews, although the strongest distinctions can be found in the last two interviews, each given after publication of "Playing in the Dark." Taken chronilogically, the interviews are a thrillling opportunity to observe how Morrison has evolved as a writer and a scholar. To me, it is clear her novels are a carefully crafted attempt to mirror the racialized signifying she identifies in her scholarly critiques of white writer's work.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No one knows Morrison's work like herself, July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations) (Paperback)

Toni Morrison was clearly ahead of her time -- look at her novels. Her interest in myth, history, a decentered narrator, racialized images of self, and aural language were well ahead of most critics and theorists, who are only now recognizing the full worth of her work. These collected interviews allow us to hear from the horse's mouth what her narrative project is. For Morrison fans, it is particularly interesting to see how the various white interviewers grapple with Morrison's insistence on writing about the culture she knows best -- black culture -- and not putting whites front and center. It is also interesting to see how Morrison herself switches positions throughout her career, from an insistence that she writes only for herself (early in her career) to writing for "the [black] tribe" (middle of her career)to writing for seemingly everybody (later career). A particular treat, for me, were references scattered throughout to how "prickly" Morrison can be and how catty she was about not being nominated for a National Book Award for SONG OF SOLOMON.