This is one of those rare books that is at least 8x too short. Morrison has kicked open a door for inquiry which is provocative and needed, drawing through expansive perception and sample close analyses enough data to argue that our most fundamental myths not only about whiteness but about American-ness have been built upon an historical infrastructure of slavery. It is not nearly enough, she says, to analyze an artist's life or work for racist ideas--in fact, differing from some of our current trends in this area, she takes "no position, nor do I encourage one, on the quality of a work based on the attitudes of an author." In addition then, and more vitally, we must examine the fictional constructions of black (and thus white) identity. This is an area for scholarship which criticism heretofore has avoided, "too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes." And now this book belongs on my short shelf of critical theory to which I must always refer.