Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination [Paperback]

Toni Morrison (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 27, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0679745424 | ISBN-13: 978-0679745426 | Edition: Reprint

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved and Jazz now gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that promises to change the way we read American literature even as it opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race.

Toni Morrison's brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. She shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires.

Written with the artistic vision that has earned Toni Morrison a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

"By going for the American literary jugular...she places her arguments...at the very heart of contemporary public conversation about what it is to be authentically and originally American. [She] boldly...reimagines and remaps the possibility of America."
--Chicago Tribune

"Toni Morrison is the closest thing the country has to a national writer."
The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Morrison takes a turn as a literary critic, examining the American literary imagination and finding it obsessed with the white/black polarity.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Morrison ( Jazz , LJ 4/15/92) believes that an African American presence, largely ignored by critics, has always permeated white American literature. She opens by carefully setting her parameters and defining her terms--e.g., Africanism: "the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people." The first few pages feature densely packed language whose meaning becomes clearer when Morrison examines such specific works as Willa Cather's Sapphira and the Slave Girl . This brief, highly provocative book, which considers "the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it," is highly recommended not only for Morrison's many admirers but for all those interested in American literature.
-Louis J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn Campus , New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 91 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (July 27, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679745424
• ISBN-13: 978-0679745426
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,923 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.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#67 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

#67 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opening October 10, 2000

By Maurice Williams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Playing in the Dark is without a doubt, the most informative critique of the use of the African American presence in American literature. Morrison critiques the work of some of the most famous American novelist and points out how their work is influenced by blackness. Her critique is sharp and forthright. She challenges writers and critics alike to reevaluate their use of language, coding, and imagery as it relates to characters or situations of an "Africanist" nature. The critique identifies specific instances where negative imagery and characterizations are used by writers to help solidify whatever point being made, or image being created. Playing in the Dark should be required reading for any literature curriculum and any critic or writer who dare place pen to paper in an effort to inform or enlighten the reading public.

17 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Importance of Seeing in the Dark February 20, 2001

By Ragan Fox

Format:Paperback

When I first read this amazing criticism on American literary history, I finally got it. A huge cloud of misunderstanding and empty justifications lifted from above my head, and I, for the first time, learned how to critically analyze a text. Much more, I learned how to engage with a history of texts. Playing in the Dark effectively chronicles the absence or misconstruction of African-Americans in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemmingway. Morrison's illuminations on how the presence of black is often conflated with evil and lurking metaphores, while white is typically reduced to all that is pure is truly brought to life through the literary examples she utilizes. Further, her argument concerning how Africanism was/is used as a distancing mechanism to ensure hegemony retains its power is most likely the most well developed argument of its kind.

All of Morrison's thoughts are hopefully (and I stress hopefully with utopian blinders on) already flying through the psyches of Americans, but Playing in the Dark gives concrete words to abstract thoughts. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who plans to critically engage in literature.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Old Friend Turns on Yet Another Lightbulb in my Head July 9, 2012

By John L. Gibson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was extremely fortunate to meet Toni Morrison some twenty years through Dr. Jonathan Lovell as we three were involved with the National Writing Project in San Jose, California. She always had something to say. She focused on attention on that "something" and not on herself, even though she was a well known writer who had received many high awards.

You had to love her novels. To read them was to live them.

The first of her nonfiction I have read is her recent Playing in the Dark. Her analysis, her perspective, her depth of thinking is what I would expect from her - brilliant. To read it is to learn.

We used to exchange Christmas cards; but my many moves have now precluded that. So, it is good to hear from you again, Toni. Thank you again.

- John Gibson