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4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Read for Dissertation, Queen Mary University of London 2020.
A triumph. I don't know the texts (Cather, Poe, Hemingway) or whether she's fair to them, but that's almost not the point. It's more like reading [a: James Baldwin|10427|James Baldwin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1343346341p2/10427.jpg], if he had New Critic chops, and were using them to destroy the basis of New Criticism.
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
It is not surprising that Toni Morrison's 1992 examination of the role of "Africanism" (the racialized symbolic system that informs nearly all elements of literature in the English language, from violence to desire, history to landscape). It is also not surprising that this 100-page collection of three essays took me three times as long to read than James' Baldwin's essay of equal length. Both authors are the size of history; unlike Baldwin, however, Morrison takes few pains to reach out to wide swaths of readers. And of course, that is her absolute prerogative.
I have been one-third of the way through The Source of Self-Regard, Morrison's final collected speeches and writings, for over a year now. Morrison's mind is a landscape unto itself; it has its own semaphores and features, which telegraph meaning both within her own mind, as well as to other writers and critics--academics. Since I occupy a small portion of these terrains, it is not surprising that it takes me three times the effort to digest what Morrison conveys.
In this strange equation I've laid out, however, I gain at least three times the value of the effort that I put in. Morrison's cool system of relationships provides visibility into what I've been discerning subconsciously in my own literary critiques. Morrison consistently lays bare and justifies my anxieties about how and what we teach in the English classroom. In this collection, for example, I found an explanation for why I had the impulse to teach Hawthorne's single chapter entitled "The Black Man" from The Scarlet Letter -- there was a reason it gave me pause, and the reason, which Morrison elucidated, is the historical context and longstanding tradition of shorthand around darkness and bodies, which she refers to as Africanism.
In "Disturbing Nurses and The Kindness of Sharks," Morrison critiques Hemingway with gorgeous nuance--even generosity. I have never been a fan, myself, but she somehow conveys simultaneous respect for both his artistry and apparent guilelessness about how he mobilizes Africanism. The same cannot be said for Willa Cather under Morrison's scrutiny; unlike her examination of Hemingway, Morrison burns a hole with the magnifying class she employs to lay bare Cather's contortions to uphold meaning-value systems around darkness.
I have been one-third of the way through The Source of Self-Regard, Morrison's final collected speeches and writings, for over a year now. Morrison's mind is a landscape unto itself; it has its own semaphores and features, which telegraph meaning both within her own mind, as well as to other writers and critics--academics. Since I occupy a small portion of these terrains, it is not surprising that it takes me three times the effort to digest what Morrison conveys.
In this strange equation I've laid out, however, I gain at least three times the value of the effort that I put in. Morrison's cool system of relationships provides visibility into what I've been discerning subconsciously in my own literary critiques. Morrison consistently lays bare and justifies my anxieties about how and what we teach in the English classroom. In this collection, for example, I found an explanation for why I had the impulse to teach Hawthorne's single chapter entitled "The Black Man" from The Scarlet Letter -- there was a reason it gave me pause, and the reason, which Morrison elucidated, is the historical context and longstanding tradition of shorthand around darkness and bodies, which she refers to as Africanism.
In "Disturbing Nurses and The Kindness of Sharks," Morrison critiques Hemingway with gorgeous nuance--even generosity. I have never been a fan, myself, but she somehow conveys simultaneous respect for both his artistry and apparent guilelessness about how he mobilizes Africanism. The same cannot be said for Willa Cather under Morrison's scrutiny; unlike her examination of Hemingway, Morrison burns a hole with the magnifying class she employs to lay bare Cather's contortions to uphold meaning-value systems around darkness.
Oh, how I wish this book had been required reading as an undergrad English Lit major.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism