The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations / Toni Morrison.

Morrison, Toni, author.

Book

First edition.

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

ix, 354 pages ; 25 cm

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.

Essays -- African American authors.

Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors.

Meditations -- African American authors.

Essays -- Women authors.

Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- Women authors.

Meditations -- Women authors.

Speeches.

Essays.

Meditations.

Works. Selections

Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-354).

I. THE FOREIGNER'S HOME. The dead of September 11 -- The foreigner's home -- Racism and fascism -- Home -- Wartalk -- The war on error -- A race in mind: the press in deed -- Moral inhabitants -- The prince of wealth, the cost of care -- The habit of art -- The individual artist -- Arts advocacy -- Sarah Lawrence commencement address -- The slavebody and the blackbody -- Harlem on my mind: contesting memory: meditation on museums, culture, and integration -- Women, race, and memory -- Literature and public life -- The Nobel lecture in literature -- Cinderella's stepsisters -- The future of time: literature and diminished expectations -- INTERLUDE: BLACK MATTERS. Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Race matters -- Black matter(s) -- Unspeakable things unspoken: the Afro-American presence in American literature -- Academic whispers -- Gertrude Stein and the difference she makes -- Hard, true, and lasting -- PART II. GOD'S LANGUAGE. James Baldwin eulogy -- The site of memory -- God's language -- Grendel and his mother -- The writer before the page -- The trouble with paradise -- On "Beloved" -- Chinua Achebe -- Introduction of Peter Sellars -- Tribute to Romare Bearden -- Faulkner and women -- The source of self-regard -- Rememory -- Memory, creation, and fiction -- Memory, creation, and fiction -- Goodbye to all that: race, surrogacy, and farewell -- Invisible ink: reading the writing and writing the reading.

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