On Morrison
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 19 Feb 2026
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- 149,00 kr
Publisher Description
'Serpell is a superlative essayist' DIANA EVANS
'Breathtaking, provocative, and refreshing' IMANI PERRY
The essential companion to Toni Morrison’s work, written by Namwali Serpell, ‘one of the most innovative and intelligent writers today’ (Financial Times)
Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and most beloved of writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, ‘she is our only truly canonical black, female writer – and her work is highly complex.’ In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and professor to illuminate Toni Morrison’s masterful experiments with literary form.
This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her vivid fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry – with contextual guidance and original close readings. Accessible and thrillingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of our time, but how to approach any great work of literature. The conversation between the two black women artist-readers that rises from these pages is stylish, edifying and spectacular in its scope and erudition.
'A literary miracle' KIESE LAYMON author of Heavy: An American Memoir
'Incisive, tender, and also honest and unsparing’ HANIF ABDURRAQIB, author of A Little Devil in America
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Serpell (The Furrows), a novelist and professor of English at Harvard, provides an insightful and stimulating exploration of the work of Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. Arguing that Morrison's literary skill often gets overshadowed by her public image as a Black female writer, Serpell focuses on the novelist's artistry and technique, demonstrating "how to read Morrison with the seriousness that she deserves." Most chapters interrogate a single novel, beginning with Morrison's first, The Bluest Eye, in which Serpell finds an "emphasis on absence" that pushes the narrative beyond "an identitarian sob story" into a work of art. Throughout, she highlights Morrison's tendency to critique, or "throw shade" at, white stories, arguing, for example, that the 1981 novel Tar Baby is a satirical retelling of the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? In exploring Morrison's archives, Serpell finds notes that reveal the title character in Morrison's masterpiece Beloved returns in her subsequent novel Jazz as the character Wild. Serpell also takes readers through Morrison's only published short story, "Recitatif," which chronicles an interracial female friendship without specifying the race of either character, as well as a handful of her critical pieces, plays, and poems. Through exceptional close readings and sharp analyses, Serpell puts Morrison's genius on full display. This will enthrall Morrison fans and cultivate new ones.
