Toni
Morrison is a celebrated American author and professor, famous
for her epic novels about the African American experience.
She is both a Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning
author, the first black woman to win the Nobel!
Influences
on Toni Morrison: Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was an American
folklorist and writer. She is often associated with the Harlem Group and a
major influence for authors Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Hurston’s books
include Mules and Men (1935) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
Known for its epic themes and vivid
dialogue, Morrison’s fiction explores the roles of black women in a racist,
male-dominated society.
Sula
(1974), is a novel by Toni Morrison. In this contemporary novel themes and
characters are presented in an evocative structure of opposites.
Song of Solomon (1977), is a novel by
Toni Morrison. This contemporary tale focuses on the dynamics of the Southern
African American family.
Jazz (1992), is a novel by Toni Morrison.
Morrison translates several jazz conventions, including the improvised solo, into
literary form in this novel set in 1920s Harlem.
Paradise
(1998), is a novel by Toni Morrison. This novel explores the history and
tensions of the fictional town of Ruby, Oklahoma, an all-black town near which
a women’s commune has recently been established in an old convent. In following
the lives and deaths of the women from this convent, Morrison makes use of
several realitybending elements of magic realism.
Although James Joyce explored the
colonialist theme of Robinson Crusoe as early as 1911, his comments were not
published until 1964. Since then, writers such as Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott,
and Edward Said have viewed the novel as an allegory of colonialism.
On
Beloved, the Novel: This
spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as
intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to
Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories
of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And
Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and
whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
- Gale/Routledge/Cazamian/Amazon Book
Review
Image(s) courtesy: quotesnew.com/amazon.com
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