BLACK PAPER, writing in a dark time

264pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Reprint, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (2021) 2022

ISBN: 9780226823867

A collection of essays by Teju Cole on what it means to be human, what it means to bear witness, and "the wisdom latent in the dark".

Includes the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures, which Cole delivered at the University of Chicago in 2019. "Under the title, 'Coming to Our Senses', they are published here for the first time, in slightly modified form."

"What we see is an individual taking stock of their surroundings, a mode that Cole has mastered. To read this book is to enjoy the generosity of his thought, to be invited into a contemplation of your inner life, to embrace the complexity of others, and to see in the darkness not only despair but also understanding and even refuge. Simukai Chigudu, The Guardian

“Black Paper is not simply a collection. There is an identifiable through-line which brings these multiple essays together into a unified text: namely, a reckoning with aesthetic experience when one is surrounded by darkness. If impaired vision is the issue in his earlier Blind Spot, total loss of sight is what is at stake here. Can we become comfortable seeing in the dark, or even seeing darkness and welcoming what is there to be found? ... Through the artful vehicle of his precise prose, Cole has arrested us. He has made us stop, ponder, and pay attention.” Los Angeles Review of Books

Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and the author of seven books, including Open City, Blind Spot, and Golden Apple of the Sun. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 until 2019. A 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.