The Measure of Our Lives A Gathering of Wisdom

<b>At once the ideal introduction to the legendary Nobel Prize winner and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. • With a foreword by <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author Zadie Smith.<br><br>"She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller." —Oprah Winfrey</b><br><br>This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison's entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction—from <i>The Bluest Eye</i> to <i>God Help the Child,</i> from <i>Playing in the Dark</i> to <i>The Source of Self-Regard—</i>to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision. <br><br>Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation—stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity—addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. <i>The Measure of Our Lives</i> brims with elegance of style and mind and moral authority.