Toni Morrison

Toni Toni Morrison Noted for examination of black experience (particularly black female experience) Born February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio Grandfather born a slave Family lost their land: forced to work in mines and mills

Overview Attended Howard University and later Cornell Has taught at several universities Mother of two sons 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1993 Novel Prize for Literature

Toni Morrison Morrison made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America.

Novels The Bluest Eye 1972 The Bluest Eye 1972 Sula 1974 Sula 1974 Song Of Solomon 1977 Song Of Solomon 1977 Tar Baby 1981 Tar Baby 1981 Beloved 1987 Beloved 1987 Jazz 1992 Jazz 1992 Paradise 1999 Paradise 1999 Love 2003 Love 2003 A Mercy 2008 A Mercy 2008

Themes Race Womanhood The effects of history Memory The contingencies of love Examining how all four intertwine to affect the beliefs and actions of individuals.

Literary/Historical Time Period Discoveries: FM Radio Polio Vaccine Seat belt Cause of Down’s Syndrome Test-tube baby Major events: Civil right’s movement Race Relations Elvis Presley The Beatles Kennedy Assassination King Assassination

The Past: An Inexhaustible Resource Living and Imagining the Historical— revising “the Same” slave-narrative tradition Rememorying the Past: Configuring and Translation—Beloved and rememory as “the Other” History Goes on: Repatterned and Re-enacted—storytelling as a process

Toni Morrison's way of addressing her reader has a compelling lustre, in a poetic direction. When she was very young, her family's landlord set fire to the house in which they lived when her parents fell behind with the rent.... Her family reacted to this absurd form of crudeness, monumental crudeness, not with resignation but with laughter. This, says Toni Morrison, is how you can distance yourself from the act and take your life back. You take your integrity back.

“Recitatif” 1983 “Recitatif” (1983) Morrison’s sole published short story A “recitatif” or “recitative” = “a vocal style in which a text is declaimed in the rhythm of natural speech with slight melodic variation” (American Heritage College Dictionary, 3 rd ed., 1997). The story is Twyla’s recitatif.

Doubles “Recitatif” a story of doubles: one black, one white ● Unclear which is which Similarities to Poe’s “William Wilson” ● first-person narration ● early institutional experience (school/orphanage) ● meetings at intervals later in life ● narrator is challenged and hurt by the double But “Recitatif” ends with their reconciliation

More Doubling Both girls misfits in the orphanage: don’t have “beautiful dead parents in the sky” (2255) ● Twyla’s mother dances late ● Roberta’s is sick Bad students: ● Twyla “couldn’t remember” things (2254) ● Roberta can’t read

Racial Ambiguity Roberta “a girl from a whole other race” (but which?) “like salt and pepper” “Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world” “how it was in those days: black—white” Busing (to integrate schools black & white) ● Twyla’s son Joseph ● Roberta’s kids

Historical Structure Story of doubles suspended through recent American history: ● Race relations ● Busing (to integrate schools) ● Computer industry ● Changes in town of Newburgh, New York: once “upstate paradise,” then half “on welfare,” with new wealthy tech class working for IBM

Pop Culture Klondike ice cream bars Tab Yoo-Hoo Chiclets Elmer’s Glue IBM A&P The Wizard of Oz The Price Is Right The Brady Bunch Jimi Hendrix

Impermanent Settings “Recitatif” transient settings. ● Orphanage ● Howard Johnson’s ● New shopping mall/parking lot ● Picket lines ● Coffee house

Archetypal Structure Easter, Christmas Maggie—a mute woman ● Story of primal guilt which (like the story of Adam and Eve) takes place in a garden, an apple orchard ● “Gar girls” Corruption of gargoyles, “the evil stone faces” Associated with evil, like the gargoyles of medieval Gothic cathedrals

Significance of Maggie Shifting memories=shifting meanings: ● Maggie fell ● Maggie didn’t fall, was knocked down ● Twyla and Roberta both kicked Maggie, who was black ● Twyla didn’t kick Maggie, but wanted to (associated Maggie with her mother) ● Roberta didn’t kick Maggie, but wanted to (associated Maggie with her own mother)