The Nobel Prize-winning author of "Beloved" and "Jazz" gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that changes the way we read American literature and 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" is the essential reading for all students, critics, and scholars of American literature.
