Toni Morrison’s the Source of Self-Regard

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Join actors André Holland and Phylicia Rashad as they perform a dramatic reading of Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. The actors will read selections curated by Morrison scholar and Columbia University professor Farah Jasmine Griffin. This encore performance is a tribute to Morrison, whose birthday is February 18.

In The Source of Self-Regard, Morrison takes on a range of topics with resonance today—the complex history of race relations in the U.S., migration and the notion of borders, feminism and social politics, among many others. She also offers appraisals of renowned writers and artists, such as James Baldwin, William Faulkner and Romare Bearden—as well as her own work.