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courtofsmutandstuff 's review for:
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
by Toni Morrison
In my post-college life, it's very infrequent that I pick up a text and think "I wish I was reading this for a class," but that's exactly how I felt here. Morrison here is elevated, precise, and so intricate in her observations I felt one reading was not enough for me to do her work justice, that I was only getting a fraction of what she is conveying. It is a text that requires you to be well-rested, alert, and ready to work - it is not entertainment.
Morrison best states her purpose herself in the final pages of the text: "My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served... All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes." This text is wonderful as a supplemental criticism of the texts she analyzes, and I wish I was more familiar with the ones she does (although I was still able to follow along). I would highly recommend this for literature teachers/professors to use to supplement if they teach any of the texts she looks at.
Unless you've done work as an English or cultural studies major, you may struggle with this (I did and I have a Master's in English), but you can do it: reread, go slowly, and reflect on it.
Morrison best states her purpose herself in the final pages of the text: "My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and imaginers; from the serving to the served... All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes." This text is wonderful as a supplemental criticism of the texts she analyzes, and I wish I was more familiar with the ones she does (although I was still able to follow along). I would highly recommend this for literature teachers/professors to use to supplement if they teach any of the texts she looks at.
Unless you've done work as an English or cultural studies major, you may struggle with this (I did and I have a Master's in English), but you can do it: reread, go slowly, and reflect on it.