The enduring brilliance of the late Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison, shines forth from the pages of The Source of Self-Regard (Knopf, $28.95)—a compilation of selected essays, speeches, and meditations spanning decades of the writer’s life. In her famous Nobel Lecture, included here, Morrison proclaimed: “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.” The Source of Self-Regard displays Toni Morrison’s powerful and prophetic use of language to discern the cultural issues that shape human experience. Her compassionate yet unflinching insights into themes of race, identity, and power in everyday life burn with prescience and ultimately lean towards hope. “Dream the world as it ought to be,” Morrison said in her 1988 Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address. This dreaming, as Morrison put it, should not be “the activity of the sleeping brain, but rather the activity of a wakened, alert one.” Reading through this poignant collection of Morrison’s reflections is like waking up to the subtext of your own life. The words gathered in this book will continue to be Morrison’s lasting gift to us all.