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The Origin of Others

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( 5,155 ratings, 698 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
The Origin of Others presents Toni Morrison's profound reflections on race, fear, and belonging, themes central both to her fiction and contemporary politics. Drawing from her Norton Lectures, Morrison explores why humans construct 'Others' and the literary roots of racism in America. She examines the works of authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Faulkner alongside her own novels including Beloved and Paradise. The book highlights how literature shapes racial understanding and addresses modern issues like globalisation and migration.
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in race, literature, and social issues, especially those who appreciate Toni Morrison's fiction and seek deeper understanding of identity politics and cultural history through a literary lens.

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What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?

Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison's fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated booksβ€”Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy.

If we learn racism by example, then literature plays an important part in the history of race in America, both negatively and positively. Morrison writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin colour to reveal character or drive narrative. Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalisation and the mass movement of peoples in this century.

National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison's most personal work of nonfiction to date.

Series: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

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  • The Origin of Others
    America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Drawing on her Norton...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critically acclaimed, the book is praised as a multifaceted work combining critique, memoir, and literary analysis. Reviewers highlight Morrison's incisive intellect and cultural insight, with essays enriched by personal memory and scholarly depth. The Millions calls it a vital companion to Morrison’s earlier work on race in literature, while other critics find it politically timely and prescient in the era of rising global tensions.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780674976450

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 18 September 2017

Country: United States

Imprint: Harvard University Press

Contributors:

  • Foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 16.0mm

Width: 111.0mm

Height: 181.0mm

Weight: 200g

Pages: 136

About the Author

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. The author of numerous critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, she was the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, at Princeton University. Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle and Between the World and Me.

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