Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

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July 16, 2026

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Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a 1992 nonfiction work by Toni Morrison. In this book, Morrison examines how the concept of whiteness has been a central theme and a source of fascination within American literature. She argues that the construction of blackness has been used to define and shape the identity of whiteness in the American literary imagination. Morrison explores how this dynamic has influenced the works of various American authors, revealing the pervasive presence and significance of race in shaping literary narratives and identities.12

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African American literature
African American roots
…Harlem during the 1920s, and Playing in the Dark, a trenchant examination of whiteness as a thematic obsession in American literature. In 1993 Morrison became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her later works include Paradise (1998), which traces the fate of an all-Black…
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…Harlem during the 1920s, and Playing in the Dark, a trenchant examination of whiteness as a thematic obsession in American literature. In 1993 Morrison became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her later works include Paradise (1998), which traces the fate of an all-Black…
Read More

Toni Morrison
Nonfiction works and children’s books
…published a work of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Many of her essays and speeches were collected in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (2008; edited by Carolyn C. Denard) and The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019). She and her…
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…published a work of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Many of her essays and speeches were collected in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (2008; edited by Carolyn C. Denard) and The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019). She and her…
Read More