Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

by Toni Morrison

Book Overview

An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race--and promises to change the way we read American literature--from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner

Morrison 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679745424
• ISBN13: 9780679745426
• Release Date: July 1993
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Morrison is Brilliant

Playing in the Dark raises important questions about white hegemony in our literary traditions. It is extremely well written and will make you look at everything you read in a different light. Great book.

The Importance of Seeing in the Dark

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.

Eye Opening

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.

Very Enlightening

An excellent monograph discussing the African presence in pieces of liturature, particularly early American literature, that were previously thought to be void of such refrerences. She also offers some very interesting insights on the true motives of slavery and race relations.

Finding light in the darkest of regions.

The vital importance of "Africanism" to the construction of "whiteness" in America has for too long gone ackowledged. Fortunately, Toni Morrison has taken the first step towards the erasure of this disgusting continuation of "sidelining" a black presence that, as Morrison clearly points out in in this illuminating monograph, has served as the building block in the long self-definition process of Americas and its literature. A brilliantly titled, written, and executed ninety pages, "Playing in the dark" demands reading from anyone remotely interested in the formation of America's founding literature and cultural ideologies. If anyone can tackle this subject, it is Toni Morrison, and she does so with a lucidity neccesassy when "playing in the dark."Daniel A. Jacome Tufts University