Toni Morrison (SC)

Toni Morrison: Forty Years in The Clearing enables audiences/readers, critics, and students to review Morrison's cultural and literary impacts and to consider the import, and influence of her legacies in her multiple roles as writer, editor, publisher, reader, scholar, artist, and teacher over the last four decades. Some of the highlights of the collection include contributions from many of the major scholars of Morrison's canon: as well as art pieces, music, photographs and commentary from poets, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez; novelist, A.J. Verdelle; playwright, Lydia Diamond; composer, Richard Danielpour; photographer, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders; the first published interview with Morrison's friends from Howard University, Florence Ladd and Mary Wilburn; and commentary from President Barack Obama.

The fifteen essays in this collection explore the resonant intertextual relationship between the fiction of William Faulkner and that of Toni Morrison. Although the two writers are separated by a generation as well as by differences of race, gender, and regional origin, this close critical examination of the creative dialogue between their oeuvres is both timely and appropriate.

This compelling study explores the inextricable links between theNobel laureate?s aesthetic practice and her political vision,through an analysis of the key texts as well as her lesser-studiedworks, books for children, and most recent novels. Offers provocative new insights and a refreshingly originalcontribution to the scholarship of one of the most importantcontemporary American writers Analyzes the celebrated fiction of Morrison in relation to hercritical writing about the process of reading and writingliterature, the relationship between readers and writers, and thecultural contributions of African-American literature Features extended analyses of Morrison?s lesser-knownworks, most recent novels, and books for children as well as thekey texts

Toni Morrison: A Biography looks at the remarkable life of an essential American novelist, whose critically acclaimed, bestselling books offer lively, powerful depictions of black America.

This Introduction offers readers a guide to the world of Morrison in all its complexity, from her status as a key player on the global intellectual stage to her unique perspective on American history and her innovative narrative techniques. Covering every novel from The Bluest Eye to A Mercy, Tessa Roynon combines close readings with critical insights into Morrison's other creative work, such as short stories, libretto and song lyrics and unpublished pieces for performance.

Moving between close reading and critical theory, Toni Morrison: An Ethical Poetics reveals the ways in which Morrison's primary engagement with language has been a search for how and what language is made to communicate, and for how and what speaks in and from generation to generation. There is no easy escape from such legacy, no escape into a pure language free of the burdens of racialized agendas. Rather, there is the example of Morrison's commitment to writerly, which is to say readerly, wakefulness. At a time when sustained study devoted to single authors has become rare, this book will be an invaluable resource for readers, scholars, and teachers of Morrison's work.

This guide to Morrison’s work offers: an accessible introduction to Morrison’s life and historical contexts a guide to her key works and the themes and concerns that run through them  an overview of critical texts and perspectives on each of Morrison’s works  cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism  a chronology of Morrison’s life and works.