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What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction Hardcover – Illustrated, March 25, 2008

by Toni Morrison (Author), Carolyn C. Denard (Editor)
4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 70 ratings
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What Moves at the Margin collects three decades of Toni Morrison's writings about her work, her life, literature, and American society. The works included in this volume range from 1971, when Morrison (b. 1931) was a new editor at Random House and a beginning novelist, to 2002 when she was a professor at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate. Even in the early days of her career, in between editing other writers, writing her own novels, and raising two children, she found time to speak out on subjects that mattered to her. From the reviews and essays written for major publications to her moving tributes to other writers to the commanding acceptance speeches for major literary awards, Morrison has consistently engaged as a writer outside the margins of her fiction. These works provide a unique glimpse into Morrison's viewpoint as an observer of the world, the arts, and the changing landscape of American culture.

The first section of the book, "Family and History," includes Morrison's writings about her family, Black women, Black history, and her own works. The second section, "Writers and Writing," offers her assessments of writers she admires and books she reviewed, edited at Random House, or gave a special affirmation to with a foreword or an introduction. The final section, "Politics and Society," includes essays and speeches where Morrison addresses issues in American society and the role of language and literature in the national culture.

Among other pieces, this collection includes a reflection on 9/11, reviews of such seminal books by Black writers as Albert Murray's South to a Very Old Place and Gayl Jones's Corregidora, an essay on teaching moral values in the university, a eulogy for James Baldwin, and Morrison's Nobel lecture. Taken together, What Moves at the Margin documents the response to our time by one of American literature's most thoughtful and eloquent writers.

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  1. Print length
    212 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    University Press of Mississippi
  4. Publication date
    March 25, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    6.56 x 0.95 x 8.14 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    160473017X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1604730173
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although Morrison's powerful novels on race and identity have secured her literary reputation, the commanding voice of her essays, speeches and reviews offers compelling insights into family, history, other writers and politics. The pieces span from 1971, when Morrison was an editor at Random House, to 2002, the year she won the Nobel Prize, and range from book introductions to thoughts on the nature of writing and reflections on 9/11. In a 1971 New York Times Magazine article, Morrison bluntly observes that black women's response to the nascent feminist movement is, Distrust.... They look at white women and see them as the enemy. Following Toni Cade Bambara's death in 1995, Morrison recalled her friend's writing gift: Bambara is a writer's writer, an editor's writer, a reader's writer... nothing distracts from the sheer satisfaction her story-telling provides. In a powerful address delivered to the American Writers Congress in 1981, Morrison proclaims, [W]e don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writers' movement—assertive, militant, pugnacious. Denard's judicious selections offer eloquent insights into the themes that are the rich ground for Morrison's haunting fiction. 10,000-copy first printing.(Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

For Nobel laureate Morrison, language is holy, story is power, and inspiration is found “at the margin,” that is, in lives locked out of America’s white, corporate mainstream, in art of conscience, in overlooked beauty and hidden truths. Editor Denard incisively introduces this well-structured collection of clarion works spanning three decades and exemplifying Morrison’s exacting arguments, commanding forthrightness, and blistering wit on subjects personal and universal, timely and timeless. Whether she is remembering her grandparents, praising Toni Cade Bambara and other writers, defining black womanhood, celebrating black heritage, or dissecting racial and political issues, Morrison, drawing on her experiences as a book editor and educator as well as a novelist, rejects “lump thinking,” pursues historic facts, and brings courage and candor to bear on complex conflicts. A master stylist, penetrating thinker, and committed artist wholly engaged in transforming lives, Morrison believes that a novel “should be beautiful, and powerful, but it should also work. It should have something in it that enlightens.” Morrison holds to the same high standards in her revelatory nonfiction. --Donna Seaman

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Mississippi; Illustrated edition (March 25, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 212 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 160473017X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1604730173
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.02 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.56 x 0.95 x 8.14 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 70 ratings

About the author

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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
70 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Margaret Deeb
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2013
Verified Purchase
Spending time with Toni Morrison, hearing her voice, I got caught up with her, in her brilliance. It is a marvel to me just how brilliant she is, this glimpse into how her mind works, into what it is to be intellectually brilliant and soulful too, and a voice so assured that she gets right down to it from the first moment and never lets up.

After reading only a little I knew why I had to buy the Morrison book, (which was expensive for me)…to hear her many words, spoken over a long life, that give ultimate value to the Word and its redemptive qualities.

She has such a unique voice that she calls up something different in me than anyone else has, and it is a bit like waking, like revelation, like not being fully awake but coming awake, and yet lost in that area of not being quite lucid yet.

I often jot quotes from books in a journal but I couldn’t pull out the things she wrote that moved me most because they wouldn’t have it. They have to remain whole to be what they are. She has no sound bytes but what happens with the few sentences you can pull out, is you get a reminder from them but not the whole wallop over the head that says something you can’t repeat and not only because you can’t remember and do not even know, but only for it having spoken to you way down deep.

Returning to “What Moves at the Margin” later, from my own thoughts came these odd feelings that I could join her in my way – not as intelligently, not from a place of being as educated or well read, not from any of the places she has been, but from the places I have been.

This, I would guess, is the whole point.

Mari Perron, St. Paul, MN
18 people found this helpful
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Sharron F Tucker
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Book! Beautiful Condition!
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2021
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This book arrived quickly and was in excellent condition! It was beautifully double wrapped just like the special book it is! Thanks to Sequitur Books! We'd order from them again without hesitation.
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Jasmine Long
5.0 out of 5 stars This book! Game changer !
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2017
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Her idioms ! Pure genius. The way she articulates and describes the way her works personal situations social occurrences particular references texts articles history people culture relationships react bounce off of and influence each other using race, blackness as her underlying tone is absolute genius ! You end up wanting to re read sole chapters because of the impact of her words, the whole book is quotable. Favored for a very important worthy impactful reason.
3 people found this helpful
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Firestarter
5.0 out of 5 stars Insight Into A Brilliant Mind
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2015
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This book is a must read for anyone who is a Toni Morrison fan. Not only is she one of the best living writers in the world, but she is a good social critic. I enjoyed many of the essays featured in this book. Five stars!!!
3 people found this helpful
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MMandeville
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2012
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This woman moves mountains with words. The best writing about 9/11 I have ever read. I only wondered where I've been and how I've survived this long without the words of this writer to inspire my mind and exercise my heart muscle. Do not read if you are allergic to deep thought or strong feelings. Wonderful.
6 people found this helpful
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texas
5.0 out of 5 stars Great non fiction
Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2020
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Love
Toni Morrison
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LESTER O'GARRO
5.0 out of 5 stars TONY AT HER BEST
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2012
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STORY WAS SO GOOD AND SINCE SHE HASN'T PUBLISHED ANYTHING IN A LONG TIME I READ THIS BOOK IN ONE SITTING.. I JUST COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN.
THANK YOU FOR BEING MS. TONY MORRISON, BECAUSE YOUR THE BEST WE HAVE PRODUCED FROM THE SLAVES FROM AFRICA IN THE NEW WORLD..THAT HAVE SURVIVED...
2 people found this helpful
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jazz
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2016
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I enjoy every book Ms. Morrison writes. Bought this one because I didn't have it in my library.
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