What is race and why does it
matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America's
foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and
dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire
for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison's
most personal work of nonfiction to date.
Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity on The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison's fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books-- Beloved, Paradise and A Mercy. d
