The Cambridge Introduction To Toni Morrison

Lively and accessibly written, this Introduction offers readers a guide to the complex and rewarding literature of Toni Morrison.

Lively and accessibly written, this Introduction offers readers a guide to the complex and rewarding literature of Toni Morrison.

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is one of the most widely studied of contemporary American authors. Her novels, particularly Beloved, have had a dramatic impact on the American canon and attracted considerable critical commentary. This 2007 Companion introduces and examines her oeuvre as a whole, the first evaluation to include not only her famous novels, but also her other literary works (short story, drama, musical, and opera), her social and literary criticism, and her career as an editor and teacher. Innovative contributions from internationally recognized critics and academics discuss Morrison's themes, narrative techniques, language and political philosophy, and explain the importance of her work to American studies and world literature. This comprehensive and accessible approach, together with a chronology and guide to further reading, makes this an essential book for students and scholars of African American literature.

What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

A comprehensive 2011 guide to the genres, historical contexts, cultural diversity and major authors of American fiction since the Second World War.

Combining literature and psychoanalysis, this collection foregrounds the work of literary creators as foundational to psychoanalysis.

This book examines Toni Morrison’s highly influential works through the lens of philanthropy. The point of departure of this endeavor is the keen observation that philanthropy has always played a leading role in US discourses about the nation itself. While doing so, time and again philanthropy has also been used as a means of social stratification – especially for so-called social minorities such as the African American community, whose historical experience within the United States is at the very heart of Morrison’s novels. This book pursues the goal of a twofold understanding – on the one hand, through offering a rather innovative access to Morrison’s works, the project allows for new insights into one of today’s most influential authors. On the other hand, this book explores the productivity of the concept of philanthropy for literary and cultural studies – a concept hitherto largely neglected by scholars in both academic fields.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.