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Zusatztext “[T]hese 11 eloquent essays! by academics and writers from various backgrounds! offer thoughtful! sometimes brilliant insights on the cultural fractures that the trial and its media frenzy both spotlighted and distorted. Standout pieces . . . redeem the complex human issues behind the button-pushing hype.” —Entertainment Weekly Informationen zum Autor TONI MORRISON is the author of ten novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to A Mercy (2008). She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in New York. With contributions by: Toni Morrison George Lipsitz A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw Ishmael Reed Leola Johnson and David Roediger Andrew Ross Patricia J. Williams Ann duCille Armond White Claudia Brodsky Lacour Klappentext Co-edited and introduced by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Birth of a Nation'hood elucidates as never before the grim miasma of the O.J. Simpson case, which has elicited gargantuan fascination. As they pertain to the scandal, the issues of race, sex, violence, money, and the media are refracted through twelve powerful essays that have been written especially for this book by distinguished intellectuals--black and white, male and female. Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast a chilling gaze on the script and spectacle of the insidious tensions that rend our society, even as they ponder the proper historical, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguistic ramifications of the affair. With contributions by: Toni Morrison, George Lipsitz, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh, Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Ishmael Reed, Leola Johnson and David Roediger, Andrew Ross, Patricia J. Williams, Ann duCille, Armond White, Claudia Brodsky Lacour The Official Story: Dead Man Golfing Introduction by Toni Morrison We have been deceived. We thought he loved us. Now we know that everything we saw was false. Each purposeful gesture, the welcoming smile, the instant understanding of how we felt and what we needed. Even before we knew what was in our best interests, he seemed to anticipate and execute it right on cue. He gentled us toward our finer instincts; toward the medicine that would cure us; toward the rest we needed. He imitated our language in structure and content. And all with the most charming good nature—joy even. So obvious was his fidelity we had no doubt he would lay down his life for us. It seemed inherent, in his nature, so to speak. It was what he was born for. It was not so. Not only did he not love us, he loathed and despised us. All the time he was planning to kill us. And if he is let go, he will do it again; kill more of us. Why? Because he is an animal. Cunning, manipulative, subtle, but savage nevertheless. How could we have been so deceived? How could we have let our vigilance become so clouded? Was it the coast—dulcet, permissive, delusional? The weather—a narcotic calm, enervating heat? The long journey to get to where we were? Or was it perhaps our need to be deceived? Desperate to be that effortlessly and deeply loved, had we fashioned and secured our own blindfolds? Sitting in the courthouse at the trial watching Justice sway her scales; listening to sworn depositions; seeing the witnesses relive their horror, the survivors of the San Dominick could have pondered along those lines over the trial of the Senegalese man who, with a dagger and ferocious single-mindedness, took by murder control of a vessel in order to reverse...