Overviews of Toni Morrison's Nonfiction and Drama
In addition to publishing eleven works of fiction and authoring two plays as well as the libretto to Margaret Garner, Morrison was a prolific public intellectual, who published several books of criticism. She also served as editor for a number of timely collections during the 1990s and 2000s.
Morrison's most influential nonfiction book might be Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (2007). But two other collections of her essays are also highly recommended, Toni Morrison: What Moves at the Margin. Selected Nonfiction (2008), and The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019).
Two particularly important collections Morrison edited include Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Social Construction of Reality (1992), and Burn this Book: PEN Writers Speak out on the Power of the Word (2009). We have overviews of the essays Morrison wrote for those collections included below.