ACL1001: Reading Contemporary Fiction Lecture 10: Toni Morrison and Black Writing

The Harlem Renaissance Writers and artists: such as Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes These writers and artists were associated with the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the Urban League They were also influenced by black intellectuals, such as James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B Du Bois (Wintz, 1988)

Post-Emancipation Racial segregation Discrimination in the workplace: domestic service and unskilled labour Ideology of racism – Anglo-saxon racial superiority African-American troops in the World Wars Race riots Theodore Roosevelt: said that lynchings occurred because of ‘black sexual assaults on white women’ (Wintz, p. 7)

The Black Southern Writer’s Experience Alice Walker, 1984, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Community e.g midwifery; solidarity Division between country and city; north and south Writing influenced by Harlem Renaissance writers and also Black consciousness/rights activists, such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Families – fighting against racism (Walker,1984, 19)

Heritage Walker writes that the Black writer has inherited: ‘a compassion for the earth, a trust in humanity beyond our knowledge of evil, and an abiding love of justice. We inherit a great responsibility as well, for we must give voice to centuries not only of silent bitterness and hate but also of neighbourly kindness and sustaining love’ p. 21

Black Nationalist Movement 1960s/1970s – emphasized racial stability and solidarity Black female writers such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker insisted that nation-building had to include the realities of Black women’s lives ‘Collectively, these writers foregrounded the challenges that violence poses to women’s subjectivity, identity, and understanding of self in social environments that marginalize women’s experiences with abuse and victimization’ (Davis, 2005)

African-American Writing Slave narratives Retelling and rewriting history Oral tradition Family relationships: the lives of ordinary people Gender relations

Toni Morrison Born 18 Feb, 1931 Graduated from Howard University, 1953 Taught at Texas Southern University Textbook Editor - Random House Currently, professor at Princeton University Nobel Laureate – 1993.

Interview with Jana Wendt - 1998 Wendt: You have in your writing certainly marginalized whites. Why are they of no particular interest to you? Morrison: I was interested in another kind of literature that was not just confrontational, black versus white. I was really interested in black readership. Wendt: You don’t think you will ever change and write books that incorporate white lives into them substantially?

Morrison: I have done. Wendt: Substantially? Morrison: You can’t understand how powerfully racist that question is, can you? Because you would never ask a white author, ‘When are you going to write about black people?’

Toni Morrison Toni Morrison ‘sets out to write the novels which she wanted to read; novels which dealt with Black lives and Black history’ (Wisker, 2000, p.56) Morrison’s novels counter canonical narratives; they oppose the ethnocentrism of the US literary establishment; they interrogate race myths; they deal with the issues of justice and civil rights; they draw on cultural and emotional memory (Morrison, 2003).

Song of Solomon Magic Realism Mythology/Oral Tradition: Flying Africans Orality and Literacy Ancestors/Community