Toni Morrison has described how reliant her writing students were on the opinions of others even to form a critical judgment on their own. In an interview she mused: “One thing that has interested me is how enormously timid the students are about risking any criticism on things where there are only primary sources. They talk an awful lot about pioneering criticism, but they are really unwilling to pass judgment on paper about a book that has only a few little reviews to examine. They don’t mind having a body of work that they can respond to: secondary sources, criticism, a teacher’s
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