Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary ImaginationAn immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race and promises to change the way we read American literature. Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune,