Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.35 AVERAGE
4.35 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
like incredible obviously. read this to use in a paper, but so informative on how to write/research criticism. perfect length for what it is. a must read for sure. just teaches you how to read and how to interact with texts, shows how to be critical without being overly harsh. yeah. the full package.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
really insightful! my first read from toni morrison, but i found this to be really interesting and i loved reading from her perspective.
informative
slow-paced
I will definitely be writing a longer review of this. Suffice it for now to say that it's a masterful and paradigm-changing exploration of what it means for literature to be "American." Specifically, what does it mean that the vast majority of literary criticism has ignored or overlooked the centrality of Blackness - Black characters, the imagery and vocabulary of Blackness in texts, and silences and erasures around Blackness - in American literature, from its earliest examples. Morrison convincingly argues that there is no real understanding of the American "canon" without reckoning with this pervasive deployment and concealment of Blackness in our national literature. It's a paradigm-shifting claim, since it means that virtually all traditional scholarly interpretation of American literature is seriously incomplete, if not entirely wrong.
I often waver on what rating to give a book - in terms of what *I* got out of the book personally, I'd probably give it a 4. This isn't any fault of the book or Morrison's; it's simply because I haven't read any of the texts that she focuses on in these essays. While I followed her argument, I would have gotten even more out of it had I been familiar with the texts she discusses. But as a work of craft - the prose, the cogency of the argument, and the incredible significance to scholarship on American literature and history - this is absolutely a 5.
I often waver on what rating to give a book - in terms of what *I* got out of the book personally, I'd probably give it a 4. This isn't any fault of the book or Morrison's; it's simply because I haven't read any of the texts that she focuses on in these essays. While I followed her argument, I would have gotten even more out of it had I been familiar with the texts she discusses. But as a work of craft - the prose, the cogency of the argument, and the incredible significance to scholarship on American literature and history - this is absolutely a 5.
informative
medium-paced
I’m on a mission to deepen my critical reading skills this year. Only a few months into that journey, it became clear that Playing in the Dark was a foundational piece of criticism that I needed to read ASAP if I was going to do the thing right. So I borrowed it from my library, and I’m so glad I did.
This short book (~100 pages), published in 1992, is actually three adapted lectures Morrison gave at Harvard University. Those who have only read Morrison’s fiction might be unprepared for how academic the tone of her nonfiction can be, but she was a genius, so it’s no surprise. Be prepared to take this book slowly to really absorb what she’s saying.
Morrison’s thesis is that all work in the American “canon” is shaped or influenced by an awareness of Black people in American history — what she calls American “Africanism”:
“Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.”
Today, in 2025, it doesn’t feel radical (in fact, it feels like critical race theory), but her arguments still made me think about things in new or different ways — and there’s no doubt that this book sharpened my own critical lens.
informative
A powerful account of how white American literature and its authors use the "black presence" to shape their novels and elevate their protagonists, while silencing and othering black characters and even blackness as a concept and color. Morrison urges her readers, fellow writers, and scholars to shift perspective from the racial object to the racial subject, all the while carefully separating authors from their characters and pointing out that writing can indeed be and is a place of imagination and empathy. The examples are spot on (and quite disturbing), but I feel the chapters are organized from the abstract to the concrete, and I could have followed them better the other way around.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
An eye opening experience in witnessing how blackness is portrayed in literature, as a writer i would say this should be required reading for anyone trying to be a writer as well.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Very informative in regards to how black people are portrayed in literature by white writers. Used great examples. A little challenging at certain points.
should be required reading for writers, also her insults were just brilliant