A review by sherbertwells
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Three essays exploring the under-discussed “Africanist” presence in the American canon. Morrison is the best literary critic I have ever read, and I only wish there were more analyses to read.

“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny” (52)
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