lukenotjohn 's review for:

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison

3.0

---

I adore Morrison's writing as a novelist, and while this endeavor into academic nonfiction didn't disappoint, it also didn't dazzle in the same way that her creative writing nearly always does. This was a straightforward examination of the presence of "Africanist" figures in some American canonical literature, written with a crisp precision that is generally impressive. In short, Morrison's argument is that the heralded writers of early American literature included the presence of Black characters as symbols used to both explore the "dark" corners of their imagination and reinforce self-perceived and self-created characteristics of white identity. There are a number of brilliant sentences woven throughout, shining so brightly that they can make you blink at the cutting ways they're still relevant today. However, the scope is more micro than macro for the most part, and Morrison is primarily concerned with the texts at hand. I'd imagine that, had I read the material she was critiquing and exposing, I'd have enjoyed this book a good deal more.