Toni Morrison

In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single Beloved. “A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

Toni Morrisons bekanntester Roman in Neuübersetzung von Tanja Handels. Beloved, Toni Morrisons bekanntestes Werk und einer der wichtigsten Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts (The New York Times), erzählt mit den Mitteln des magischen Realismus von den grauenhaften Auswirkungen der Versklavung auf das Leben einer Familie. Sethe lebt seit Langem in einem kleinen Haus am Rande von Cincinnati, wo sie die Vergangenheit auszulöschen versucht. Auf der Flucht von der Plantage mit dem zynischen Namen «Sweet Home» hat sie einst ihr Leben riskiert, ihren Mann verloren und ein Kind begraben müssen, hat unvorstellbares Leid ertragen und dennoch nicht den Verstand verloren. Doch der Schrecken des Erlebten verfolgt In der Bluestone Road 124 treibt ein Spuk sein Unwesen, der widerspenstige Geist von Sethes Tochter will nicht vergessen werden. Das Kleinkind, dessen Tod Sethe nicht verwinden kann, starb namenlos; sein Grab trägt allein das Wort Beloved. Als eines Tages Paul D. vor Sethes Tür steht, den sie noch von der Plantage kennt, reißt er alte Wunden wieder auf – und setzt so einen schmerzhaften Heilungsprozess in Gang.

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars. Morrison's response to Sellars’ 2009 production of Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the female characters, letting them speak and sing in the fullness of their hearts. Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeare’s doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war — and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central, and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.

Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child—the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment—weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish ... Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother ... Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she's suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother ... and Sweetness, Bride's mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."

America's most celebrated novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison extends her profound take on our history with this twentieth-century tale of redemption: a taut and tortured story about one man's desperate search for himself in a world disfigured by war. Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he's hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again. A deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood - and his home.

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.

Bride es una niña que ha heredado de sus ancestros un color de piel tan negro que sorprende a toda su familia, de piel clara, y provoca el rechazo de su madre y el abandono de su padre. Pasados los años, la chiquilla se ha transformado en una hermosa empresaria de éxito, pero la alargada sombra de la infancia y el sentimiento de culpa planean sobre su conciencia, oscureciendo su vida adulta y la de su pareja. Un buen día, y sin explicación alguna, Bride asiste impotente al abandono de Booker, el hombre al que ama. Sumida en el desconcierto y marcada por el dolor de revivir el rechazo, Bride emprende un viaje en busca de la redención, que solo llegará cuando en la negrura asome su verdadero yo. Mientras tanto, la madre de Bride, pasa sus días en un geriátrico y, solo después de toda una vida podrá reconocer y entender que aquello que se les hace a los niños marcará para siempre sus vidas. Dura y tierna a la vez, La noche de los niños da energía a la voz de las mujeres y traza caminos insólitos que nos liberan de la soledad. Acompañan las palabras de Toni Morrison unas espléndidas ilustraciones de Óscar Astromujoff que siempre ha interpretado de la mejor manera el mensaje de la gran autora.

TONI MORRISON INÉDITA El único y deslumbrante relato de la ganadora del Premio Nobel de Literatura, «un gigante de su época y de la nuestra» (Margaret Atwood), con un epílogo de Zadie Smith. «Ella lideraba y nosotros la seguí nos enseñó la belleza del lenguaje y el poder que se desata cuando se unen un gran corazón y una mente feroz». -Salman Rushdie Dos niñas son obligadas a compartir habitación en un centro de acogida. Una blanca y otra negra. Ambas se rechazan de inmediato, pero poco a poco se dan cuenta de que tienen en común más de lo que esperaban. «La sal y la pimienta», como las empiezan a llamar los demás, se vuelven inseparables, y con el paso del tiempo se van encontrando en distintos un restaurante, un supermercado, una manifestación, siempre en lados opuestos de los conflictos sociales. En el único relato que escribió, la gran Morrison imagina el mapa de las identidades raciales de forma alternativa y sitúa al lector en el centro de uno de sus experimentos literarios más complejos. Esta edición incluye, además, un epílogo en el que Zadie Smith ahonda en la maestría de este sofisticado artefacto literario. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner—for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith “A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader.” —Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth   In this 1983 short story—the only short story Morrison ever wrote—we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.   Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white, and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?   A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times

Che cosa è la razza, e perché le diamo tanta importanza? Che cosa spinge gli esseri umani a costruire «un altro» da cui differenziarsi? Perché il colore della pelle ha avuto nella storia un peso così negativo? Perché la presenza dell'altro da noi ci fa così paura? Toni Morrison, in un testo che si impone come una vera e propria orazione civile, va in cerca delle risposte a queste domande parlando di sé, della sua opera, di letteratura, storia e politica, partendo dal XIX secolo e arrivando fino ai giorni nostri, e alle grandi migrazioni che caratterizzano il mondo globalizzato. "L'origine degli altri" è un libro di straordinaria attualità, nel quale i temi che siamo abituati a vedere banalizzati e avviliti nel dibattito pubblico vengono affrontati dalla scrittrice americana. Prefazione di Ta-Nehisi Coates e introduzione all'edizione italiana di Roberto Saviano.

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a spellbinding symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of Black women in a fading beach town. “A marvelous work, which enlarges our conception not only of love but of racial politics.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.

A vital non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered American writersSpanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout Mouth Full of Blood our search for truth, moral integrity and expertise is met by Toni Morrison with controlled anger, elegance and literary excellence.The collection is structured in three parts and these are heart-stoppingly introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11, a meditation on Martin Luther King and a eulogy for James Baldwin. Morrison’s Nobel lecture, on the power of language, is accompanied by lectures to Amnesty International and the Newspaper Association of America. She speaks to graduating students and visitors to both the Louvre and America’s Black Holocaust Museum. She revisits The Bluest Eye, Sula and Beloved; reassessing the novels that have become touchstones for generations of readers.Mouth Full of Blood is a powerful, erudite and essential gathering of ideas that speaks to us all. It celebrates Morrison’s extraordinary contribution to the literary world.‘Word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference—the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.’The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1993

Pecola es una niña pequeña que vive con sus padres y tiene una prima que se llama Claudia. Le gustan las muñecas y las caléndulas, que no le gustan a nadie excepto a ella. Pecola es negra y cree que es fea porque no se parece a Shirley Temple. Y tiene un truco para desaparecer cuando sus padres se pelean o su padre la molesta por las noches: piensa en que tiene unos preciosos ojos azules y que todo el mundo admira su belleza y que las otras niñas la envidian. Pero ese sueño nunca se convertirá en realidad y Pecola seguirá atrapada en la triste vida que le ha tocado en suerte. En esta su primera novela, Toni Morrison, la ganadora del Premio Nobel de Literatura 1993 parte de la realidad de una chiquilla desgraciada para tratar temas muy diversos, como el concepto de belleza impuesto, la voz femenina o la infancia truncada. Y lo consigue con una historia dura y deliciosa al mismo tiempo.

Cholly e Pauline Breedlove têm dois filhos - Sammy e Pecola. Seria uma típica família americana não fossem os Breedlove muito pobres e negros. A situação de marginalidade é ainda mais grave para a menina Pecola, que encontra rejeição em todos os ambientes que freqüenta. Na escola, é ridicularizada até pelas outras crianças negras, pois é quem tem a pele mais escura. Nos Estados Unidos da década de 40, época em que se passa a história, o padrão de beleza é exatamente o oposto daquele que a menina ostenta. Garotas negras e pobres, como ela, costumavam ganhar de presente bonecas brancas de olhos azuis e tomar leite em canecas estampadas com o rosto da atriz-mirim Shirley Temple. Todas as noites, a pequena Pecola reza para ter olhos azuis - num delirante e inconsciente desejo de redenção e ascensão social.

"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time." So begins this visionary work from a storyteller. Toni Morrison's first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Paradise opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage. In prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem, Toni Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation of race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present.

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.

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.

Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison’s writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity. Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human For the full list of books visit vintageminis.co.uk Also in the Vintage Minis series:Sisters by Louisa May AlcottLove by Jeanette WintersonBabies by Anne EnrightLanguage by Xiaolu Guo

A beautiful, arresting short story by Toni Morrison—the only one she ever wrote—about race and the relationships that shape us through life, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable at the time, they lose touch as they grow older, only to find each other later at a diner, then at a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and in disagreement each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Written in 1980 and anthologized in a number of collections, this is the first time Recitatif is being published as a stand-alone hardcover. In the story, Twyla's and Roberta's races remain ambiguous. We know that one is white and one is black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? Morrison herself described this story as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." Recitatif is a remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and about how perceptions are made tangible by reality.

A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Toni Morrison, in a stand-alone Knopf hardcover for the first time. In this 1983 short story--the only short story Morrison ever wrote--we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Another work of genius by this masterful writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial. We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.

Includes book and CD Audio. Texts and recordings of the stories in English; introductions and notes in Spanish. Back cover text: "Cuando Toni Morrison consiguió el Nobel apenas había escrito seis novelas y solo un cuento: "Recitatif". La única pieza de cámara de la genial autora estadounidense recoge la esencia de toda su obra: la lucha por la libertad, la amistad y la convivencia racial se funden en la historia de dos amigas de colores distintos que pasan juntas la infancia en un orfanato. "To Room Nineteen", publicado un año después que "El cuaderno dorado", obra cumbre de la también Premio Nobel Doris Lessing y piedra angular del feminismo de los 60, es uno de los relatos cortos más autobiográficos y brutales de la autora. Narra la dramática historia de Susan Rawlings, una inteligente y atareada ama de casa que vive con su perfecto marido y sus cuatro niños revoltosos en una maravillosa mansión londinense de tres plantas. El problema es que Susan quiere volver a ser la soltera solitaria que un día fue."--Editor.

Zwei kleine Mädchen, die gemeinsam in der Kleinstadt Lorain, Ohio, aufwachsen: Claudia hasst blonde Puppen, zerstört sie sogar. Ihre Freundin Pecola sehnt sich nach nichts so sehr wie nach blondem Haar und blauen Augen. Sie will schön sein wie der Kinderstar Shirley Temple. Dieser Traum ist ihr einziger Ausweg aus der gewaltvollen Welt, in der sie aufwächst. Doch in diesem Herbst 1941 in der Kleinstadt Lorain in Ohio wird Pecolas Wunsch nicht in Erfüllung gehen, ihr Leben wird sich auf andere, auf schmerzhafte Weise verändern. Sehr blaue Augen ist eine kraftvolle Auseinandersetzung mit den verheerenden Auswirkungen von Rassismus, Klassismus und Sexismus.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

Sula and Nel are two young black girls: clever and poor. They grow up together sharing their secrets, dreams and happiness. Then Sula breaks free from their small-town community in the uplands of Ohio to roam the cities of America. When she returns ten years later much has changed. Including Nel, who now has a husband and three children. The friendship between the two women becomes strained and the whole town grows wary as Sula continues in her wayward, vagabond and uncompromising ways.

Zwei Mädchen, die zu Frauen heranwachsen. Zwei Freundinnen, die zu schlimmsten Feindinnen Die fügsame Nel und die Rebellin Sula sind als junge Mädchen unzertrennlich, als sie in ärmlichen Verhältnissen in einer Kleinstadt in Ohio aufwachsen, die ausgerechnet «Bottom» heißt. Während Nel dort eine Familie gründet, flieht Sula zu den fortschrittlichen Idealen der Großstadt. Als sie nach zehn Jahren zurückkehrt, hat sich zwischen den beiden alles verändert. Nel und Sula müssen sich mit den Folgen ihres Handelns und dem schrecklichen Geheimnis aus ihrer Kindheit auseinandersetzen. Erschreckend, komisch und tragisch – «Sula» ist ein Buch voller Liebe und Leben, Freundschaft und Verrat.

Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.

In her first illustrated book for children, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison introduces three feisty children who show grown-ups what it really means to be a kid.

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways. With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.

America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison’s fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books—Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy. If we learn racism by example, then literature plays an important part in the history of race in America, both negatively and positively. Morrison writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative. Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison's oeuvre.

يبدو حوارهن كرقصة خبيثة، هادئة الإيقاع: الصوت يلتقي بالصوت، وكذا انحناءات التوفير، وهزات الأوراك والأكتاف، والتراجعات. يدخل صوت الحلبة، ولكن صوتاً آخر يعلو عليه، يدور كل منهما حول الآخر ويتوقف. وفي بعض الأحيان تتحرك كلماتهن في دوائر لولبية متشامخة، وتتقافز في أحيان أخرى قفزات عملاقة، ويرقّشها جميعها ضحك دافئ النبض مثل نبض قلب مصنوع من الهلام، وتبدو على الدوام واضحة بالنسبة لي ولفريدا حافة انفعالاتهن وانعطافتها واندفاعة توغلها. ولسنا نعرف معاني كل كلماتهن، فليس ذلك بمقدورنا، فنحن في التاسعة والعاشرة من العمر؛ ولذا فإننا نرقب وجوههن وأيديهن وأقدامهن ونصغي لسماع الحقيقة في جرس أصواتهن.