Book Review Playing in the Dark Reviewed by Ashwaq

Toni Morrison addresses the issue of the impact of race on American literature. "Whiteness and the Literary Imagination," Morrison remarks how African presence is used by different authors.

Along history, everything related to violence, moral dissolution, poverty is related to black in American culture. Even in literature, writers’ imagination affected to some extent by the presence of Africans in the country; the writers take advantage of social distinctions to use them in their works. The main characteristics in the book are African-American in general, and the author, Toni Morrison, in specific as she is an African-American writer. Morrison emphasizes on the role of African, and later African-American characters on different types of American literature. Moreover, Morrison criticized the existence of these characters such as: Jim in “Twain's Huckleberry Finn” or Nancy in “Cather's Sapphira” and the “Slave Girl,” is only reflects racial thoughts of the writers and to show social classification. Black people were used as a symbol of “darkness” side, as weakness and failure.

The main lesson the author intends in her book is to eliminate the racism and social inequities from American literature and from overall society.  I have learned from the book that our culture constrains our mind in the way we judge others by their colors, and their ranking on social hierarchy. Morrison writes, “Racism is as healthy today as it has a utility far beyond economy, beyond the sequestering of classes from one another, “also Morrison mentions “completely embedded in daily discourse that it is perhaps necessary and more display than ever before.”. In other words, the definition of racism recently has other underlying meaning than previously; race now become metaphorical is not only connected to economical classes and is widely distributed than before.

One of the reasons that I dislike this book is that the language of the book was very difficult to me; I could not understand the whole idea and I used the dictionary a lot, but I did not get the meaning for some of the words. I think if she use less complicated language would be better, but I think because this book is directed to writers and as result of bad experience as writer. I really like the cover of the book; it reflects some of the main idea in the book. One of the idea that I found interesting that before Toni Morrison provides her well- structured literary criticism, she start her book by giving snaps from different writings to show the reader the problem in American literature.