the source of self regard essays speeches meditations

'Dazzlingly heady and deeply personal-a rumination on her literary career and artistic mission, which is to reveal and honor the aching beauty and unfolding drama of African American life. 'Clearly we do not deserve Morrison, and clearly we need her badly.In this collection of nonfiction written over the past four decades, the revered (and sometimes controversial) author reinforces her status as a piercing and visionary analyst of history, society, literature, language, and, always, race. Morrison tackles headfirst the weighty issues that have long troubled America's conscience. ' The Source of Self-Regard speaks to today's social and political moment as directly as this morning's headlines. And this book is perhaps her most important song.' This book demonstrates once again that Morrison is more than the standard bearer of American literature. But the real magic is witnessing her mind and imagination at work. The bursts of rumination examine world history, skirt religion, scour philosophy, racism, anti-Semitism, femininity, war and folk tales.There's even a tidbit or two about her closely guarded personal life. Wish that one of the most informed, smartest, most successful people in your profession walks into your living room, pulls up a chair and says, 'This is what I've been thinking.' That's 'The Source of Self-Regard. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work ( The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others.Īn essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, 'black matter(s),' human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature.

These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin.

Description NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that speaks to today's social and political moment as directly as this morning's headlines' (NPR).

The source of self regard essays speeches meditations