Toni Morrison, who died Monday at 88, is best known for her literary fiction, starting with her 1970 debut, “The Bluest Eye,” and continuing through her 2015 novel, “God Help the Child.” But she was an incisive cultural critic and essayist as well, putting her mind to everything from black feminism to Disneyland. Below are some of her reviews and writing for The New York Times.

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‘The kindest words, the sweetest euphemisms’

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In her 1971 review of “To Be a Black Woman: Portraits in Fact and Fiction,” edited by Mel Watkins and Jay David, Morrison wrote:

“Somewhere there is, or will be, an in‐depth portrait of the black woman. At the moment, it resides outside the pages of this book. She is somewhere, though, some place, just as she always has been, up to her pelvis in myth, asking those sad, sad questions: When I was brave, was it only because I was masculine? When I was human, was it only because I was passive? When I survived, was it only because my man was dead? And when ship loads of slaves became a race of 30 million was that really only because I was fecund?”