Toni Morrison, the author and narrator of "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination," is also the author of Beloved, Song of Solomon and several other portrayals of African-American life. In this collection of essays, she examines the effect that the Africanist presence has on American literature and subsequently writers, especially black female writers, such as herself, writing in a racialized, sexualized, genderized world. Morrison writes to argue for the broadening of American literary studies in order to investigate the ways in which whiteness and blackness are constructed and the effect that this has on American literature.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination