One of the most celebrated and revered writers in the history of American literature gives us a new nonfiction collection - a gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. This book is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11, the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Ir., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, the author takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "Black matter(s)" and human rights. She looks at enduring aspects of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and, in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sala, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars.--description from dust jacket.