In an essay that discusses Toni Morrison's authorial voice and her deconstruction of Western realist epistemology Susan Sniader Lanser focuses on the two areas that Morrison highlights in her depiction of human life and behaviour - the inexplicable, and the unknowable. The first revolves around the idea that characters and events cannot be explained with certainty because it is "impossible to assign causes to effects or to delineate clear boundaries of responsibility" (Lanser 131); besides, human behaviour "remains only partially amenable to explanatory forms" (Lanser 132). The unknowable, meanwhile, has to do with the inarticulable or "what realism has designated non-existent or impossible" (Lanser 133). On the one hand the inexplicable conveys a recognition of life's disorder' and of man's robustness and variety; on the other the unknowable evokes a sense of the mystical. As Lanser's reading shows Morrison's approach is in keeping with the postmodern literary concern with reinterpretation and reinvention; her treatment of the human condition exposes the "inadequacy of white European ways of knowing" (Lanser 133). In so doing she constructs an authorial position that connects with the folkloric vision of African-American experience and, I would add, with black female imagination. In terms of culture and epistemology the suppressed or marginalised assumes authority.
Although Lanser's remarks are directed at the writer's earlier works the narrative voice in Morrison's latest novel, Jazz, makes clear that the inexplicable and the unknowable are still central to her portrayal of African-American life. The novel opens with the terse pronouncement by the narrator: "Sth, I know that woman" (3). What follows is a winding nar...
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...'d say it. Say, make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you.... (229)
On one level recreation looks to the process by which Violet and Joe Trace reconstruct their life and build anew their relationship by means of a sensible review of their priorities. This seems to be a rational working out of their problems. But recreation is also discovery and involves a full opening out to intimations of mysterious, unrealised rhythms of being within the self.
The novel begins by describing the nature and extent of Black suffering. In particular it focuses on the predicament of one couple - the Traces - whose flight from country to City marks the constant threat of poverty and deprivation. The struggle for freedom, however, is complicated by historical and personal factors. A keen sense of the past and its related traumas invariably surfaces.
The work, the Souls of Black Folk explains the problem of color-line in the twentieth century. Examining the time following the civil war the author, W.E.B. Dubois, explains the African American experience of living behind the “veil”. To fully explain the experience of living behind the veil, he provides the reader with situations that a black race experiences in reconstruction. This allowed the readers to metaphorically step into the veil with him. He accomplishes this with the use of “songs of sorrow” with were at the beginning of each chapter, and with the use of anecdotes.
Mat Johnsons novel, Pym challenges readers not only to view his work with a new set of eyes but also the work of all American literature with the understanding that the idea of Whiteness still has a very strong power over literature today. It is unfortunate that in today’s society, the pathology of Whiteness still holds a very strong presence in literary world. Literature from American authors versus literature from African American authors still continues to be segregated and handled with two different sets of criteria. Johnson’s novel engages in different aspects of the argument presented in Toni Morrison’s work entitled Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. One of the main ideals that Pym engages in is the thought that “…a figuration of impenetrable whiteness … surfaces in American literature whenever Africanist presence is engaged” (29). Through the character Chris Jaynes, Johnson’s novel focuses much attention on the Whiteness seen in the literary world and how it still affects literature today. Mat Johnson’s Pym addresses Morrison’s argument by challenging the reader to identify the pathology of whiteness as well as encourages readers not to only identify the problem but try to find new ways to combat it.
Davis, Cynthia A. "Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction." Contemporary Literature 23.3 (1982)
Morrison, Toni, "Recitatif." African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology. Ed. Al Young. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. 209-25.
Thesis: In Beloved, power is the having the authority to name and to thus define reality and perception. The abundant discrepancies that exist between name and reality in Beloved point to the destructive power implicit in the control of symbolic orders. The resistance of the black, female community to the dominant mode of self-construction (claiming oneself by naming an Other) and their subsequent discovery of a new, self-referential, musical method (that mimics Morrison’s own) of telling, and thus constructing, the self, enables the women to both redefine and free themselves from the self-victimization and logocentric confinement embodied in Sethe’s one word—Beloved. The most dangerous aspect of this method of self-repossession is the way in which it enables characters use others to escape their own responsibility of defining themselves.
Within the course of two decades these three novels deal with racism, diversity of people and similar economic status. The writers raise awareness of the oppression of the African American communities and the long lasting struggles that these folks had to endure to survive.
In Toni Morrison’s Sula, the theme of race appears in at least every paragraph of the book. This book encompasses the years 1919 to 1965, which includes some very prominent racial demonstrations in history. Morrison portrays race in three contrasting aspects, which are, the division of the black community of Bottom and the white community of Medallion, the viewpoint black people had of white people and the viewpoint white people had of black people.
Within "The Site of Memory", Toni Morrison highlights the continuous display of the black humanity through the history of Black literature and its 's social changing powers. She then goes on to explain the tools and techniques of doing so. Morrison even warns against the mixing of facts and truth. Finally, Morrison discusses what the site of memory really is and its spark to the imagination.
Samuels, Wilfred D., and Clenora Hudson- Weems. Toni Morrison. New York, NY: Twayne Publishers, 1990. 53-78. Print.
Work Cited PageCentury, Douglas. Toni Morrison: Author New York: Chelsea Publishing, 1994Childress, Alice. "Conversations with Toni Morrison" "Conversation with Alice Childress and Toni Morrison" Black Creation Annual. New York: Library of Congress, 1994. Pages 3-9Harris, Trudier. Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison Knoxville: The university of Tennessee press, 1991Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Plume, 1973Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1970Stepto, Robert. "Conversations with Toni Morrison" Intimate Things in Place: A conversation with Toni Morrison. Massachusetts Review. New York: Library of Congress, 1991. Pages 10- 29.
Toni Morrison has been called America's national author and is often compared with great dominant culture authors such as William Faulkner. Morrison's fiction is valued not only for its entertainment, but through her works, she has presented African-Americans a literature in which their own heritage and history a...
Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A. (eds.). Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York, Amistad, 1993.
Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. “ Toni Morrison.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.508-510.
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.
Toni Morrison’s Jazz is an eclectic reading based on elements of African American culture that produce, surround, and are an integral part of literary text. As we know, African American culture is distinguishable from other American cultures by its emphasis on music. This attention to music has produced two original forms, blues and jazz, and has developed distinctive traditions of others like gospel. Jazz is based mainly on one of these forms, namely –as the title infer- on jazz. This form pervades the whole book and provides not only subject and theme but also literary technique for the novel. Consequently, Jazz is not only the novel about the jazz era but also a novel that develops jazz “strategies” and creates a “jazz” of its own.