A vital new non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered writers of our time ‘word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference?the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.’ The Nobel lecture in literature, 1993 spanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout the bluest eye, sula and