War in Iran
The headlines are built on long histories and debates.
Posted on in Hot Topic
Toni Morrison
One of the most frequently banned authors continues to spark debate and admiration.
Posted on September 19, 2024 in Hot Topic
Baillie, Justine. Toni Morrison and literary tradition: the invention of an aesthetic. Bloomsbury, 2013. 229p bibl index ISBN 9781441183101, $110.00; ISBN 9781441145512, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE April 2014
Though this is not the first volume to consider what makes Morrison’s literary aesthetic unique and important–especially, The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable, ed. by Marc Conner (CH, May’01, 38-4889), addressed this issue as well–Baillie’s volume is notable for attending closely both to the aesthetic and literary traditions that Morrison draws on in each of her ten novels and to the political, historical, and social contexts in which she is positioned and out of which she writes. The result is a complex and nuanced, though still very clearly written, examination of the development of Morrison’s aesthetic over time. Most important, Baillie (Univ. of Greenwich, UK) considers how “Morrison’s aesthetic evolves in indeterminate variation and avoids simple, positive affirmations of an authentic blackness originating in overdeterminations of the folk sensibility.” The scope and accessibility of this work make it a valuable introduction to Morrison and an effective resource for those teaching Morrison’s novels; the depth and nuance of Baillie’s scholarship and argument make it an important contribution to ongoing critical conversations about Morrison’s role in developing a uniquely African American aesthetic. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. —A. M. Laflen, Marist College
Balfour, Katharine Lawrence. Toni Morrison: imagining freedom. Oxford, 2023. 240p bibl index ISBN 9780190673284, $35.00; ISBN 9780190673314 ebook, contact publisher for pricing.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2024
Morrison’s passing has led to a spate of scholarly works assessing her profound legacy in American letters. Balfour (Univ. of Virginia) has produced one of the best examinations of Morrison’s oeuvre to date. Focusing intently on the concept of freedom, Balfour connects multiple works (fiction and nonfiction) to explore Morrison’s vision of freedom as inherently complicated by the racial and gendered oppressions prevalent throughout US history. She explores these difficult political concepts in Morrison by grounding the discussion within the texts’ own specificities, teasing out the tensions that Morrison constantly evokes surrounding responsibility and rights, mobility and situatedness, home and displacement, all with an eye toward understanding Morrison’s constant questioning of abstract notions of freedom in a concretely unequal world. Though not a literary critic per se, Balfour combines her acute political knowledge with keen readings of Morrison’s prose, capturing the multiple layers of connotation that drive Morrison’s fiction. This accessible volume is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the ways in which Toni Morrison’s fiction offers political practices and ideals necessary for the current moment. Balfour’s work is not one to pass on. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —D. E. Magill, Longwood University
Moore, Geneva Cobb. Maternal metaphors of power in African American women’s literature: from Phillis Wheatley to Toni Morrison. South Carolina, 2017. 361p bibl index ISBN 9781611177480, $59.99; ISBN 9781611177497 ebook, $59.99.
Reviewed in CHOICE January 2018
The centrality of black women and mothers to African American culture is unquestioned yet often goes unremarked in wider circles, but black women writers have turned to the maternal figure as a source of inspiration and power for generations. Moore (Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater) has written a deeply researched, well-developed overview of how African American women writers have marshaled figures of maternal and feminine power from prerevolutionary days to the present. These images have served as counters to oppressive and stereotypical views of black culture and as testaments to the agency and creativity of black women as forces for change. Moore covers wide ground and impressively collates historical, biographical, and cultural contexts in her readings. Her accounts of writers Phillis Wheatley, Jessie Fauset, Toni Morrison, and Paule Marshall (to name a few) led this reviewer to consider the place in the discussion of such writers as Ann Petry and Dorothy West. That Moore leads readers to consider other writers, as well as those she specifically discusses, in new and striking ways is high praise. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. —D. E. Magill, Longwood University
Okonkwo, Christopher N. Kindred spirits: Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison. Virginia, 2022. 312p bibl index ISBN 9780813947112, $95.00; ISBN 9780813947129 pbk, $37.50; ISBN 9780813947136 ebook, $37.50.
Reviewed in CHOICE October 2022
In 2001, Toni Morrison, American Nobel Prize winner, and Chinua Achebe, Nigerian Man Booker Prize winner, met on a stage at Bard College for a conversation. On that occasion, Achebe named Morrison’s Beloved the “book he would take to a desert island.” Morrison had, on other occasions, remarked on her debt to Achebe. The shared tropes of these two writers are the focus of Okonkwo’s Kindred Spirits. Okonkwo announces his overarching goals are to point to “disciplinarily significant relations” between the two authors and to offer a theoretical model that will shed light on the “compelling intertextualities of their fiction.” In this, Okonkwo succeeds admirably. Reading Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise as Morrison’s trilogy and Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God as Achebe’s, Okonkwo convincingly demonstrates that the village serves as a dominant episteme for both writers. Both are Black “village” people moving from “slavery, abolition, and colonization” (Africa) or from “slavery, emancipation, and Jim Crow (US) to the precariousness of freedom.” So compelling are these intertextual relationships that it is a wonder, as Okonkwo muses, that this book had not already been written. Okonkwo’s prose is deft, intersectional, interdisciplinary, sophisticated, deeply researched, and a genuine pleasure to read. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. —E. R. Baer, Gustavus Adolphus College
Toni Morrison: critical perspectives past and present, ed. by Henry Louis Gates and K.A. Appiah. Amistad Press, 1993. 448p ISBN 1567430120, $24.95; ISBN 1567430252 pbk, $14.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE December 1993
Gates and Appiah, two of the foremost authorities on African American culture, have collected reviews, essays, and interviews on Morrison. The reviews allow us to observe opinion on Morrison’s work from a historical perspective, while the four interviews offer insights from her own perspective (though all of the interviews are at least five years old). The heart of the book, however, is the 15 essays by such noted critics as Houston Baker Jr., Trudier Harris, Marilyn Sanders Mobley, Barbara Christian, and Keith Byerman. There is no overlap with Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, ed. by Nellie McKay (CH, Jan’89), but several essays are also contained in Toni Morrison, ed. by Harold Bloom (1990). Gates and Appiah’s book, unlike the other works mentioned, is available in both cloth and paper. A preface by Gates, a chronology and a full bibliography are included. This is a key volume in an important new series. It is an essential purchase for all libraries interested in American literature. Summing Up: Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. —L. J. Parascandola, Long Island University–Brooklyn Campus
Toni Morrison: forty years in the clearing, ed. by Carmen Gillespie. Bucknell, 2012. 367p ISBN 9781611484915, $80.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE August 2013
Gillespie (Bucknell Univ.; Critical Companion to Toni Morrison: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, 2008) has collected an impressively varied array of genres for this volume in the “Griot Project Book Series,” which looks at the aesthetics, art, history, and culture of African America and the African diaspora. More than a scholarly exploration, the collection celebrates Morrison and her wide influence on other practitioners. There are chapters on Morrison’s work in relation to other arts–music, painting, dance–with links to audio tracks from Richard Danielpour’s opera Margaret Garner, based on Beloved, and to the poet-musicians Mendi and Keith Obadike’s lovely “Praise Song for Toni Morrison,” and also poems by Sonia Sanchez and a memoir by Nikki Giovanni. Gillespie includes scholarly pieces by Jan Furman about the relationship between moral knowledge and aesthetics in Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (CH, Oct’92, 30-0768), and by Susan Mayberry, who discusses modernism, race, and food in Tar Baby–to cite just two examples of this collection’s riches. A chronology and bibliography of Morrison’s work are included. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. —T. H. Oliviero, Pratt Institute
Wagner-Martin, Linda. Toni Morrison: a literary life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 217p bibl index ISBN 9781137446695, $90.00; ISBN 9781137446718 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE December 2015
In this succinct volume, Wagner-Martin (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) does an admirable job of orienting readers to Morrison’s extensive body of work and the even more extensive body of scholarship that has been published about that work. She achieves this concision by considering Morrison’s early life and career together in the introduction and devoting the bulk of the volume to Morrison’s career after she achieved success with her third novel, Song of Solomon. Through nine chapters, Wagner-Martin weaves a discussion of Morrison’s work as a novelist, an editor, and a public intellectual with the dominant critical interpretations that scholars have developed to read her novels. Of particular interest is Wagner-Martin’s consideration of how winning the Nobel Prize in 1993 impacted Morrison’s career and writing. The picture that emerges is of Morrison as an individual who has worked diligently to reshape the social discourse about race in the US. This book will be especially helpful to those new to studying and teaching Morrison. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; faculty; general readers. —A. M. Laflen, Marist College
Wardi, Anissa Janine. Toni Morrison and the natural world: an ecology of color. University Press of Mississippi, 2021. 208p bibl index ISBN 9781496834164, $99.00; ISBN 9781496834171 pbk, $25.00; ISBN 9781496834188 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE June 2022
Also author of Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature (2003) and Water and African American Memory: An Ecocritical Perspective (CH, May’12, 49-4936), Wardi (Chatham Univ.) here advances her acclaimed critical studies in African American literature and ecocriticism. By linking the ecology of colors in the natural environment with the work of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s fiction, Wardi traces a direct line between racism and ecocide. The introduction, “All of Them Colors Was in Me,” links embodiment with material ecocriticism and Morrison’s vision of sustainability and color theory with bodies of color. The chapters that follow focus on a particular color and the corresponding fiction. For example, brown, the color of skin, dirt, and compost, is used to explain meaning in Paradise and The Bluest Eye. Green, the color of life and healing, applies to Beloved, Home, and Song of Solomon. “Blue, the color associated with islands, swamps, water, and other ecotones” applies to Tar Baby and Love. This fascinating, insightful study concludes with the “colors” black and white, the epitome of no color and all color and the historical foundation of racial prejudice signified in A Mercy and Jazz. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. —L. L. Johnson, emerita, Lewis & Clark College