Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison

by McKay, Nellie Y.

• ISBN13: 9780873527422
• ISBN10: 0873527429
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-12-01
• Publisher: Modern Language Assn of Amer

Summary

Teachers started assigning the novels of Toni Morrison long before she won the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature and before there was a significant body of secondary literature on the author. Now her works are the subject of countless studies and listed in the syllabi of an ever-increasing number of courses in schools and universities. The editors of this volume help the teacher to sort out the best materials and to meet the many challenges that Morrison's writings pose.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Series
Preface to the Volume
Materials
Approaches
Tracing and Erasing: Race and Pedagogy in The Bluest Eye	p. 21
Teaching Controversy: The Bluest Eye in the Multicultural Classroom	p. 27
"Raked with Wonder": A White Instructor Teaches Sula	p. 34
Beyond the Bitterness of History: Teaching Beloved	p. 40
Marginality and Community in Beloved	p. 48
Authority, Literacy, and Modernism in The Bluest Eye	p. 56
Song of Solomon: Modernism in the Afro-American Studies Classroom	p. 63
Flying Home: Folklore, Intertextuality, and Song of Solomon	p. 68
Tar Baby: Philosophizing Blackness	p. 73
Using History as Artifact to Situate Beloved's Unknown Woman: Margaret Garner	p. 77
Jazz: Morrison and the Music of Tradition	p. 86
Morrison on Morrison: Using Interviews to Teach Morrison	p. 93
Sula: Imagery, Figurative Language, and Symbols	p. 99
Reading in the Dark: Knowledge and Vision in Song of Solomon	p. 106
Jazz: From Music to Literature	p. 113
"Laundering the Head of Whitewash": Mimicry and Resistance in The Bluest Eye	p. 118
An African-Based Reading of Sula	p. 127
Songs of the Ancestors: Family in Song of Solomon	p. 135
Telling Stories: A Cultural Studies Approach to Tar Baby	p. 141
Teaching Tar Baby	p. 147
Morrison's Jazz: "A Knowing So Deep"	p. 154
Contributors and Survey Participants	p. 161
Works Cited	p. 163
Index of Morrison's Novels	p. 175
Index of Names	p. 177
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.