The Source of Self-Regard

Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

By: Toni Morrison

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR).

These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others.

An essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.

A Gift

This book, Ms. Morrison’s words, are a gift to those who dare to read, question, resist the mind numbing world that’s been created. I thought there would be no better narrator than Ms. Turpin for this.

Stunning

I can’t wait to re-listen and take notes, and integrate all I’ve heard. Simply beautiful

A gift to generations and generations and generations of writers.

I love this book. It felt like an actual gift from Ms. Morrison to cool souls that have been set on fire by this political lands scale. An encouragement to keep writing, reading rigorously, and creating.

Powerful Truth!!

This work provides us with powerful insights and nuggets of wisdom that are priceless!! May we give attention to and heed these well-timed words left to us!! Focus!! Think!! And, apply the lessons found within this compilation of essays!! I highly recommend this book and the Audible companion to listen to the book as you study the written words!

Refreshing thoughts

I used to think that no one but Toni Morrison should narrate Toni Morrison's books, but this reading changed my mind. This is a wonderful collection of essays that showcases the breadth and depth of Morrison's thoughts as an artist, an activist, an intellectual and as someone with a deep love of humanity, and a sense of hope despite...well, everything. I'd thought that I could listen to this one essay at a time, in bites, but ended up bingeing over a couple of days. Like her other writings, it's too rich to take in all at once, and I am looking forward to seeing what I missed when I listen to it again and again.