An 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 , Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition.