An anthology of the Nobel Prize-winning writer’s essays, speeches and commentary on society, culture and art includes her powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King, Jr. and her poignant eulogy for James Baldwin. (literary collections).
An anthology of the author's essays, speeches, and commentary on society, culture, and art includes her powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King, Jr., and her poignant eulogy for James Baldwin.
Arguably The most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison's oeuvre.
Table of Contents
Peril vii
Part I The Foreigner's Home
The Dead of September 11
3 (2)
The Foreigner's Home
5 (9)
Racism and Fascism
14 (3)
Home
17 (4)
Wartalk
21 (5)
The War on Error
26 (7)
A Race in Mind: The Press in Deed
33 (8)
Moral Inhabitants
41 (8)
The Price of Wealth, the Cost of Care
49 (5)
The Habit of Art
54 (4)
The Individual Artist
58 (6)
Arts Advocacy
64 (3)
Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address
67 (7)
The Slavebody and the Blackbody
74 (5)
Harlem on My Mind: Contesting Memory---Meditation on Museums, Culture, and Integration
79 (7)
Women, Race, and Memory
86 (10)
Literature and Public Life
96 (6)
The Nobel Lecture in Literature
102 (8)
Cinderella's Stepsisters
110 (3)
The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations
113 (16)
Interlude Black Matter(s) Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
129 (2)
Race Matters
131 (9)
Black Matter(s)
140 (21)
Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature
161 (37)
Academic Whispers
198 (7)
Gertrude Stein and the Difference She Makes
205 (15)
Hard, True, and Lasting
220 (9)
Part II God's Language
James Baldwin Eulogy
229 (4)
The Site of Memory
233 (13)
God's Language
246 (9)
Grendel and His Mother
255 (8)
The Writer Before the Page
263 (8)
The Trouble with Paradise
271 (9)
On Beloved
280 (5)
Chinua Achebe
285 (2)
Introduction of Peter Sellars
287 (2)
Tribute to Romare Bearden
289 (7)
Faulkner and Women
296 (8)
The Source of Self-Regard
304 (18)
Rememory
322 (4)
Memory, Creation, and Fiction
326 (8)
Goodbye to All That: Race, Surrogacy, and Farewell
334 (12)
Invisible Ink: Reading the Writing and Writing the Reading
346 (7)
Sources 353