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Playing in the Dark
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
23 posts | 29 read | 19 to read
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 ReviewFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
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MsLeah8417
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Pickpick

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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Pinta
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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^p78 twisting language to preserve white character‘s agency & perspective in “To Have and Have Not.” Wesley can‘t even yell “Fish!”—Harry has to “saw he had seen” the fish.
“A better, certainly more graceful choice would have been to have the black man cry out at the sighting.” Observations, small details.

P30 “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”

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Pinta
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Pickpick

Strong piece. “American Africanism” as an OTHERED Blackness, a “fabricated presence” as foil for white characters. 1992

P77 “Eddie is white, and we know he is because nobody says so.”

P93 “Studies in American Africanism, in my view, should be investigations of the ways in which a nonwhite, Africanist presence and persona have been constructed—invented—in the United States, and of the literary uses this fabricated presence has served.”

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Lindy
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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I picked this up because, in her brilliant essay collection “How to Read Now,” Elaine Castillo praises its importance in the quest to read critically. Morrison‘s use of academic language gave me a challenge but I really appreciated engaging with her ideas about the literary imagination.

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Lindy
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes.

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elizabethlk
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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"A criticism that needs to insist that literature is not only "universal" but also "race-free" risks lobotomizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist."

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Christine
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Literary criticism can be over my head and often was here bc of Morrison‘s genius. But there was great social commentary and analysis too, and I loved every bit of that. Certain lines could pass for direct responses to American exceptionalism, January 6th, etc. I haven‘t read her fiction in forever and am eager to return to it after being reminded of what a brilliant wordsmith she was.

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RegineReads
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison

"Through the simple expedient of demonizing and reifying the range of color on a pallette, American Africanism makes it possible to say and not say, to inscribe and erase, to escape and engage, to act out and act on, to historicize and render timeless. It provides a way of contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom."

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RegineReads
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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This year has been hellish for me in my struggle with mental health. Just awful. Joining this book club (SBG) was my step back into the world of enjoying books and socializing and it really helped me ❤ I never would have picked up something like Playing in the Dark on my own, but I love it so far and I'm so happy it was the exploration track pick this month. I started writing again this past year as well, and this book speaks to my love of both.

Nute One of the best things that we can do when challenged by life and health is find our way back to good things that give us peace and comfort. I‘m happy that literature has landed solidly at your hands and before your eyes again.🙂 And, oh, the joy it must bring to be writing! BTW - where did you get that bookmark? 3y
RegineReads @Nute You are so kind ❤ Thank you, and me too!! Literature is so healing. I purchased the bookmark from Smart Brown Girl bookclub shop! #notsponsored lol, my bestie says when I love something I sound like an ad :P It's black woman run and the woman who runs it is an intelligent bamf. If you're looking for a book club I recommend you check it out! If not, the shop has bookmarks and postcards, I'm a stationary lover so I got the bundle lol! 3y
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RegineReads
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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"Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness of simple elegance in the writer's imagination, for the world that imagination evokes."

Nute Yes! 3y
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Eggs
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Mehso-so

This is scholarly writing, delivered as literary criticism, about race in well-known writers‘ works: Poe, Melville, Cather, Twain, Hemingway.

#authoramonth2020 @Soubhiville
#bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

TheAromaofBooks Sounds interesting but like a lot to digest. 4y
Eggs @TheAromaofBooks Let‘s just say it will make your head spin 🤪😳🧐 4y
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megnews
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Toni Morrison always makes you really think. Never an easy read, but always worth it. I will say I love her fiction better.

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cinder
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison

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‘‘

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TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Toni Morrison dropping some truth bombs all over Huckleberry Finn. The scene between Tom, Huck, and Jim near the end of the novel was always one that I found to be disturbing and complicated the entire novel for me. I'm glad to see Morrison analyze it with sophistication and clarity. #books #tonimorrison #americanlit #criticism #literarycriticism

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TheBookbabeblog84
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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New book alert....more Toni Morrison for this summer #books #newarrivals #lemonadesyllabus

BellaBookNook I've not read this. It sounds interesting. 7y
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theshrinkette
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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Pickpick

We don't deserve the magnificent being that is Toni Morrison.

rachelm Agreed, but I'm so grateful we have her 8y
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theshrinkette
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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BooksForYears
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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My first #readathon experience was a huge success (thanks to the #heatdome and air conditioning for keeping me indoors!) and I had a great time sharing the experience with other amazing readers! These are my completed reads, which are about 1/2 of my #24in48 TBR pile.

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BooksForYears
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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My spread for a delightful #readinglunch, including my favorite summer beverage, a G&T with lots of lime. About 30 seconds after this picture was taken, I was forced inside by a semi-swarm of wasps who were as interested in the food as I was. Oh well. #24in48 #readathon

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sandra888
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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timely and timeless. fascinating critical analysis. while the focus is squarely on literary criticism--and how there is a major aspect lacking, as of 1992 anyway--Ms Morrison's theory is applicable to culture. if you want to understand race in America, this is an integral text.

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sandra888
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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sandra888
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
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next up. just rediscovered this on my over-stuffed, double-row'd bookshelf. it was actually a gift from '92. looking forward to it. will likely intersperse with a fiction book. got to sit w/ Ms Morrison's words as i go.

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