Darkness and Light (Toni Morrison in general)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Toni Morrison in general
Date:	25/06/02 (224 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a real eye opener

Disadvantages: can be very confusing

Toni Morrison is one of those writers who could change your life. As a white sort-of middle class teenager, I knew nothing about race issues in America until I encountered Morrison, and her writing deeply affected me. Her work is political, exquisite and often very confusing.

Overview of the books (I think this is most of the fiction, I've not yet read any non fiction, but she has published academic work on race issues.)

'Beloved' a stuning, prize winning novel dealing with the lengths one woman will go to in order to keep her children out of slavery. Violence, passions, ghosts and vengeance, a plot that will tie you in knots and characters who will force you to ask some difficult questions about your own morality. Set during and after the slave trade.

"Jazz" - set I think in the twenties and/or thrities, its much more urban than 'Beloved' and deals with the black move into the cities, into jazz, into new power structures and new troubles. Most of the book is compelling, the end is a tad confusing.

"Song of Solomon" - deals with family histories and the power of the past over the present. Some amazing ideas and images, but a plot that I found hard to get into and stay with. Some really strange characters and names, fascinating gender and sexuality issues.

"The Bluest Eye" About a family who are ugly. About the way in which whiteness has dominated notions of beauty, and the tragedy of a black girl who has been indoctrinated with white notions of beauty. This is a very dark book, although you see much of it through a child's perspective, which is an odd effect.

"Sula" Deals with the relationship between two girls/women. Conformity and rebellion, convention and chaos - my lingering impressions of this work.

"Tar baby" - deals with a relationship between a poor black man and a well educated black model. There are a lot of cultural ten
sions between them and the book spends a lot of time exploring the how of being black and the pulls between conventionally white mainstream culture (education, money) and the poverty that has dominated black culture. It contains some of the most erotic scenes I have ever read.

"Paradise" This is the tale of a group of women - outcasts with troubled pasts who find themselves all living in one house. A group of women together make those around them fearful - there's a lot about gender relations. One of the women is white, but you never find out who, which is really rather powerful in itself - that they are damaged women is far more important than skin colour. A powerful story, probably the easiest to follow of the lot, and probably Morrison's best exploration of the dynamics within a community.

There are quite a few themes running through Morrison's work - black identity in America is central to everything she does. Gender relations are also very important. There's a great deal of consideration of people within the context of their communities, betrayal by community comes up often, and alienation within a community is ever present. Socially and politically, the books are highly complex. Morrison's other area of interest is the approach to life that rational western thought has largely poo-pooed. She writes tales of ghosts and miracles, drawing on traditions of thought that do not comply with a conventional western take on reality. Like many writers from the post colonial genre, she seeks to reclaim traditions and ways of perceiving, whilst also looking to the future. I'm a big fan of magical realism in literature, so find this aspect of her work very appealing.

Morrison is not easy reading. Many of her books are confusing, and being very much outside the culture she describes, it can be very hard to understand what is going on in the social dynamics. Well worth a go though.

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