Renowned for her detailed imagery and visual language, her powerful metaphors, her "righting" of black history, and her inimitable gift of fusing fantasy and reality, Morrison, in addition to her novels, is the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including a landmark essay, "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature," and Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), a book of literary criticism that explores the way white authors deliberately and systematically exclude blacks from their works. She is also the author of a play, Dreaming Emmett, which focuses on the murder of a black urban youth who travels to Mississippi in 1955, and a song cycle, "Honey and Rue," which won the New York State Governor's Art Award in 1986. She is the editor of several books, including Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, a collection of essays on the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy, and Birth of a Nation'hood.
In her multiple roles as writer, editor, educator, scholar, parent, and activist, Morrison has consistently demonstrated her commitment to black literature and culture. Speaking of her concern for black people, who provide the catalyst for her art and activism, she has said, "If anything I do, in the way of writing novels or whatever I write, isn't about the village or the community or about you, then it isn't about anything. I am not interested in indulging myself in some private exercise of my imagination."
