The Origin of Others

In The Origin of Others, published by Harvard University Press in 2017, Toni Morrison combines literary criticism, historical analysis, and memoir to examine America’s preoccupation with skin color as the defining factor of the self and others. Drawing on her Charles Eliot Norton lectures, she highlights different aspects of the preoccupation with race and what they reveal about the process and impact of “Othering.” In short, it is a degrading process to both those who receive its social and political benefits and to those whom it exiles. She demonstrates that literature has been both a constructive and destructive force in conveying ideas about race and belonging and that the process of Othering is rooted in anxieties around the human social and psychological need for belonging and acceptance.

This study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Summary

The Origin of Others begins with a Foreword from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who contextualizes the work in light of the 2016 US presidential election. Coates suggests that the ensuing focus on the plight of white working-class Americans revealed an indifference to the ongoing deaths of Black Americans, especially at the hands of the police. These events, Coates argues, bolster Morrison’s claims and make her arguments about the way racism functions more urgent.