Morrison expresses her desire to extend the study of American literature. Using the metaphor of a map, she writes that she wants to open this study to a “wider landscape” and cover a “critical geography” (3). She maintains that in her explorations, she will not function as a literary critic but instead as a writer. She is interested in examining the parts of a writer’s consciousness that remain out of touch to the writer. As a black woman, she also examines how free she and others can be in what she calls a “a highly and historically racialized society” (4).

Morrison investigates the claim, widely accepted among literary critics, that the presence of Africans and later African Americans did not affect American literature’s canon of works. Although the African and African-American presence shaped the Constitution as well as our history and culture, there is a commonly accepted idea that they did not shape white literature. However, Morrison believes that the central ideas of American literature—including individuality, social isolation, and innocence existing along with the idea of hell—are a response to the African and African-American presence in the US. In fact, she believes that this presence was crucial for the development of the uniqueness of American literature and the use of coded language it entails.