The Source of Self-Regard

"That speech, along with other invaluable remnants of this irreplaceable mind, appears in The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations ( public library ) — Morrison’s final nonfiction collection, replete with her wisdom on subjects as varied as borders and belonging , the singular humanistic power of storytelling , and our search for wisdom in the age of information ."

"Her last published work before her death, Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard gathers selected essays, speeches and meditations from the last four decades. Morrison may have been best known for her fiction, but this collection makes clear why she was also a highly regarded public intellectual. Despite the span over which the pieces were written, the book is almost uncomfortably timely, with Morrison turning her penetrating analysis on issues such as migration, racism, sexism, classism and fascism. Her final gift to the reading public, in which her trademark lyricism is on full display, is undoubtedly one to treasure."

"In The Source of Self-Regard, Morrison returns to ideas she introduced in her Nobel lecture about how language operates and how some of the ways we treat each other in the space we call “home” get replicated in one place after another. The book is a volume of essays, meditations, speeches, college lectures, and even tributes to people like her dear friend, James Baldwin , and others where she takes on huge issues like censorship, immigration, sexism, violence, and the role of memory in historicizing the past. Her essay on the value of the arts, even in the face of great opposition, emerges as her form of protest against those who would attempt to limit what an author can or cannot write and say. And, always, she is engaged in sharing difficult truths about the past and the present that mitigate our ability to move forward as global citizens. It is an eclectic but very weighty compilation that illuminates the breadth of her intellect and the expanse of her creativity as an artist. These writings show the ideas she has repeatedly grappled with, like how we treat the other and the forces that mitigate our ability to see our intersectional interconnectedness. She was always looking at how we read the other and what decisions we make about the other, based on that reading. Yes, I believe Morrison remained interested in the ways our very existence is connected to the modern propensity toward alienation and isolation. Though she was wary of the anxiety of influence and resisted perspectives on her work that only validated her writing against white norms, she was nevertheless very interested in existential forms of isolation and alienation that human choices and consequences created. Like Woolf, Faulkner, and even Baldwin, she was interested in the effects of society on the interior life and consciousness of her characters. Thus, she was interested in both external and internal sources of alienation that affected self-regard. As an artist, teacher, and critic, she was keenly aware that the oppression of the other inevitably resulted in self-degradation as well. Morrison understood better than most that you cannot continually mistreat the other and not diminish your own humanity. At every turn, she countered alienation with the value of belonging and community."