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4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
informative
medium-paced
This was my first Toni Morrison book ever and honestly it was so hard to digest as I am not used to Morrison’s prose. I rated it a 4 because once I went over that hump, everything that she said made sense. Definitely changed my perspective on how we use language especially when writing. I will definitely read this again and with a better understanding, I should be able to grasp everything a whole lot better.
wicked big-brained reading! found the nuanced way of reading fiction to be very helpful in informing my future reading, most especially of classics. would be interested in similar texts addressing modern examples as the storytelling and storytellers most prominent have changed.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
this just isnt for me. toni morrison wrote this so tbh playing in the dark couldnt possibly be 'bad' in any objective sense, but personally i feel it dull and the length too short despite very good bits scattered thruout and an intriguing subject matter.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery
Moderate: Violence, Colonisation
Minor: Death
I think I understood the thesis, but I found Morrison's language challenging. Perhaps it was not intended for a general audience? I can imagine studying this book as part of an American literature course.
There are some excellent, lengthy, reviews of the book on this site if you're interested.
There are some excellent, lengthy, reviews of the book on this site if you're interested.
challenging
informative
reflective
💭 "Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. So it is to them, the creators of American literature, that I look for clarification about the invention and effect of Africanism in the United States."
For writers, Morrison argues, imagining is 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨. But imagination can be "disabled" by a "highly and historically racialized [genderized, sexualized] society." In particular, USian literature and literary criticism tends to dip race-marginalized others in acid, hoping thereby to remove attention or specificity. They are still there, notes Morrison — as are the altered hands of those who tipped the toxin. She exhumes "Africanism," Eurocentric codes of self-definition as the negation of Blackness (a process Robinson calls the construction of the "Negro"). She calls attention to a simple fact: racism's funhouse mirror does not only distort the subjugated, but the perpetrator. Readers commit to "adult discourse [...] serious intellectual effort" on the mind, imagination and behavior of those who perpetuate "supreme" whiteness. The results: parasitic, sycophant whiteness that fancies itself brave, moral and bold 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵 to a bound, fixed, unfree and serviceable Africanist other.
I giggled while reading, gleeful at Morrison's clarity and cutting. She announces a weighty project and repeatedly disinvites jesters and knaves from distracting, disingenuous engagement. As I recall, these ideas are also embedded in 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗱, where her foundational lectures are reprinted in full. Her editor's hand is only apparent in comparing them, with this emerging as the tighter, more accessible form of her brilliance.
Always grateful for Toni's genius 🖤
For writers, Morrison argues, imagining is 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨. But imagination can be "disabled" by a "highly and historically racialized [genderized, sexualized] society." In particular, USian literature and literary criticism tends to dip race-marginalized others in acid, hoping thereby to remove attention or specificity. They are still there, notes Morrison — as are the altered hands of those who tipped the toxin. She exhumes "Africanism," Eurocentric codes of self-definition as the negation of Blackness (a process Robinson calls the construction of the "Negro"). She calls attention to a simple fact: racism's funhouse mirror does not only distort the subjugated, but the perpetrator. Readers commit to "adult discourse [...] serious intellectual effort" on the mind, imagination and behavior of those who perpetuate "supreme" whiteness. The results: parasitic, sycophant whiteness that fancies itself brave, moral and bold 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘴𝘵 to a bound, fixed, unfree and serviceable Africanist other.
I giggled while reading, gleeful at Morrison's clarity and cutting. She announces a weighty project and repeatedly disinvites jesters and knaves from distracting, disingenuous engagement. As I recall, these ideas are also embedded in 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗱, where her foundational lectures are reprinted in full. Her editor's hand is only apparent in comparing them, with this emerging as the tighter, more accessible form of her brilliance.
Always grateful for Toni's genius 🖤
I hadn't heard about "Playing in the Dark" until looking through a list of recommendations for short non-fiction. I wish it would have been an option to take a class about writers' literary criticisms during my English degree because this was fascinating, and I think it would have added an extra layer of complexity to see more writers talking about each other's works. Morrison is, of course, a brilliant writer, and this book shows she's a brilliant reader as well. I haven't read all the works she discusses here, but I was still interested in every part of this criticism.
My favorite part of this book was the preface. The rest of the book elaborated on some of the questions Morrison proposed in the preface and applied them to canonical texts, but I was most interested in the questions themselves and how they could be applied to contemporary texts. I wish my African-American literature class had gone beyond Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B DuBois and Langston Hughes to ask questions like:
- How are ‘literary whiteness’ and ‘literary blackness’ made, and what is the consequence of that construction?
- When does racial ‘unconsciousness’ or awareness of race enrich interpretive language, and when does it impoverish it?
- What happens to the writerly imagination of a black author who is at some level always conscious of representing one’s own race to, or in spite of, a race of readers that understands itself to be ‘universal’ or race-free?
I also love how Morrison frames the relationship between literature, race, and imagination:
"Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer's imagination, for the world the imagination evokes. Both require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer's notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability."
- How are ‘literary whiteness’ and ‘literary blackness’ made, and what is the consequence of that construction?
- When does racial ‘unconsciousness’ or awareness of race enrich interpretive language, and when does it impoverish it?
- What happens to the writerly imagination of a black author who is at some level always conscious of representing one’s own race to, or in spite of, a race of readers that understands itself to be ‘universal’ or race-free?
I also love how Morrison frames the relationship between literature, race, and imagination:
"Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer's imagination, for the world the imagination evokes. Both require being mindful of the places where imagination sabotages itself, locks its own gates, pollutes its vision. Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer's notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability."
challenging
medium-paced