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Toni Morrison features a collection of ten new essays by noted Morrison scholars, including recipients of the Toni Morrison Society Book Award. Focusing upon Morrison's most recently published novels ( Paradise , Love , A Mercy ) the contributors to this volume revisit issues that continue to engage Morrison and are part of the currency of contemporary American literary and cultural history. These selections examine Morrison's ongoing 'romance' with African Americans as they continue to battle the demons of race, gender, class, and poverty, to name a few. Together, these essays offer comprehensive and nuanced discussions of Morrison's latest novels and provide new directions for Morrison scholarship in the 21st century. This volume provides students of literature, cultural studies, and history with an overview of Morrison's examination of African American progress and leadership at key moments in American history and culture from the Colonial Period to the present. Through their thematic interconnectedness, the essays reveal Morrison at her most brilliant in her ability to reach into the past to comment on contemporary issues.
List of contents
Series Editor's Introduction Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: The Grace and Gravity of Toni Morrison,
Lucille P. Fultz Part I
Paradise 2 Separate Spheres?: The Appropriation of Female Space in
Paradise ,
Shirley A. Stave 3 The Working Through of the Disconsolate: Transformative Spirituality in
Paradise,
Gurleen Grewal 4 Reclaiming the Presence of the Marginalized: Silence, Violence, and Nature in
Paradise,
Aoi Mori Part II
Love 5 "Some to Hold, Some to Tell": Secrets and the Trope of Silence in
Love,
Carolyn Denard 6 Power and Betrayal: Social Hierarchies and the Trauma of Loss in
Love,
Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber 7 The Power in "Yes": Pleasure, Dominion, and Conceptual Doubling in
Love ,
Herman Beavers Part III
A Mercy 8 Narrative Epistemology: Storytelling as Agency in
A Mercy,
Jami Carlacio 9 "What Lay Beneath the Names": The Language and Landscapes of
A Mercy,
Marc C. Conner 10 Visions and Revisions of American Masculinity in
A Mercy,
Susan Neal Mayberry Notes on Chapters Works Cited Further Reading Notes on Contributors Index
About the author
Lucille P. Fultz is Associate Professor Emerita in English at Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. She is the author of
Toni Morrison: Playing with Difference (2003) and the co-editor of
Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters (1991). She is the 2005 recipient of the Toni Morrison Society Book Award.
