Toni Morrison Paradise, Love, A Mercy

by Fultz, Lucille P.

• ISBN13: 9781441130136
• ISBN10: 1441130136
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-12-27
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Toni Morrisonfeatures a collection of ten new essays by noted Morrison scholars, including recipients of the Toni Morrison Society Book Award. Focusing upon Morrison's most recently published novels (Paradise,Love,A Mercy) the contributors to this volume revisit issues that continue to engage Morrison and are part of the currency of contemporary American literary and cultural history. These selections examine Morrison's ongoing "romance" with African Americans as they continue to battle the demons of race, gender, class, and poverty, to name a few. Together, these essays offer comprehensive and nuanced discussions of Morrison's latest novels and provide new directions for Morrison scholarship in the twenty-first century. This volume provides students of literature, cultural studies, and history with an overview of Morrison's examination of African American progress and leadership at key moments in American history and culture from the Colonial Period to the present. Through their thematic interconnectedness, the essays reveal Morrison at her most brilliant in her ability to reach into the past to comment on contemporary issues.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Toni Morrison's place in American literary and cultural studies and her global impact / Part 1. Paradise / Introduction Lucie Fultz / 2. Women's Burdens, Feminist Solutions / 3. Configurations of the Erotic / 4. Transgressions and Transformations Part 2. Love / Introduction Lucie Fultz / 5. The Symbolic Impulse in Paradise and Love / 6. Fathers and Lovers and the Limits of Friendship / 7. Emergent Black Wealth and Tensions within the Black Community Part 3. A Mercy / Introduction Lucie Fultz / 8. Cross Cultural Liaisons / 9. Morrison's Reconfiguration of the Family Chapter /10. Homo Social and Homosexual Friendships / Further Reading / Notes on Contributors / Index