Mouth Full of Blood

A vital new non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered writers of our time.

"She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truth-teller. She was a magician with language, who understood the power of words." - Oprah Winfrey

A vital non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered American writers.

Spanning four decades, these essays, speeches, and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender, and globalisation, the sweep of American history, and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout Mouth Full of Blood, our search for truth, moral integrity, and expertise is met by Toni Morrison with controlled anger, elegance, and literary excellence.

The collection is structured in three parts and is heart-stoppingly introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11, a meditation on Martin Luther King, and a eulogy for James Baldwin. Morrison's Nobel lecture, on the power of language, is accompanied by lectures to Amnesty International and the Newspaper Association of America.

She speaks to graduating students and visitors to both the Louvre and America's Black Holocaust Museum. She revisits The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved; reassessing the novels that have become touchstones for generations of readers.

Mouth Full of Blood is a powerful, erudite, and essential gathering of ideas that speaks to us all. It celebrates Morrison's extraordinary contribution to the literary world.