{"product_id":"9780679745426","title":"Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eBeloved\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eJazz\u003c\/i\u003e now gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that promises to change the way we read American literature even as it opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eToni Morrison's brilliant discussions of the \"Africanist\" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. She shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly \u003ci\u003eunfree\u003c\/i\u003e—and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten with the artistic vision that has earned Toni Morrison a pre-eminent place in modern letters, \u003cb\u003ePlaying in the Dark\u003c\/b\u003e will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"By going for the American literary jugular...she places her arguments...at the very heart of contemporary public conversation about what it is to be authentically and originally American. [She] boldly...reimagines and remaps the possibility of America.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Chicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Toni Morrison is the closest thing the country has to a national writer.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47013880201456,"sku":"9780679745426","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780679745426_p0.jpg?v=1763608303","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780679745426","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}