Toni Morrison’s monograph is mostly concerned with the intersectionality between what she refers to as “American” and “Africanist” literature. The text is broken into three sections, “Black Matters,” “Romancing the Shadow,” and “Disturbing Nurses and the Kindness of Sharks.” Morrison argues that without African Americans, there is no “Americanness,” and thus, the Africanist presence is essential to deciphering the American literary canon. She uses examples like Willa Carther, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway to demonstrate the explicit and implicit nods to African Americans.
Morrison’s goal with analyzing the work of famous American authors is to highlight how American literature is inseparable from the presence of African Americans, emphasizing that African Americans were part of the foundation of creating what it means to be “American.” Consequently, Morrison is addressing what it means to write, read, and analyze American literature. She does this by breaking down “American” and “non-American” literature, looking closely at how social status and race are what determines “Americanness.” Morrison concludes by stating that her analysis is not to condemn American authors or the American literary canon, but to call for further analysis by present and future scholars to consider Africanism within that canon.
This book is useful when assessing the past of American literature, determining whose presence was the focal point and whose presence was erased or written about only in subtext.
