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Criticism, Customs and cultures
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What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters’ greatest voices,…
pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time in book form.Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzee’s Michael K, Morrison seeks the essence of goodness and ponders its significant place in her writing. She considers the concept in relation to unforgettable characters from her own works of fiction and arrives at conclusions that are both eloquent and edifying. In a lively interview conducted for this book, Morrison further elaborates on her lecture’s ideas, discussing goodness not only in literature but in society and history—particularly black history, which has responded to centuries of brutality with profound creativity.Morrison’s essay is followed by a series of responses by scholars in the fields of religion, ethics, history, and literature to her thoughts on goodness and evil, mercy and love, racism and self-destruction, language and liberation, together with close examination of literary and theoretical expressions from her works. Each of these contributions, written by a scholar of religion, considers the legacy of slavery and how it continues to shape our memories, our complicities, our outcries, our lives, our communities, our literature, and our faith. In addition, the contributors engage the religious orientation in Morrison’s novels so that readers who encounter her many memorable characters such as Sula, Beloved, or Frank Money will learn and appreciate how Morrison’s notions of goodness and mercy also reflect her understanding of the sacred and the human spirit.
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Award winning fiction, Historical fiction, Movie and television tie-ins
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Related in kaleidoscopic fashion and set in rural Ohio during the period immediately following the Civil War, this chronicle of…
slavery and its aftermath traces the life of Sethe, a former slave. Sethe has a secret in her past so horrific that it has alienated the community, driven off her two sons, isolated her surviving daughter, and threatened her new, loving relationship with Paul D., also a former slave. Winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 1987.
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Bestsellers (Fiction), Historical fiction
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Colonial North America, 1680s. An Anglo-Dutch trader reluctantly accepts a young slave girl named Florens as payment for a bad…
debt. Her mother hopes the transaction will prove a mercy to Florens, but subsequent years in Jacob Vaark’s household reveal the harsh reality of being under another’s dominion. Some violence. Bestseller. 2008.
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Bestsellers (Fiction), Multi-cultural fiction
Human-transcribed braille
A searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the centre: a…
woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish. Bestseller. 2015.
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Multi-cultural fiction
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In 1976, nine men from the all-black community of Ruby, Oklahoma attack a former convent on the edge of town,…
which is the refuge of four female outcasts. Various tragedies that have struck the townspeople motivate the assault, which is intended to purge and protect the community. But it also reveals dark secrets leading back to the town's origins in the 1890's. Bestseller. Some descriptions of sex, some violence, and some strong language.
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Multi-cultural fiction
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The story of Violet and Joe Trace, married for over 20 years, residents of Harlem in 1926. When Joe shoots…
his 18-year-old lover, Violet disfigures the girl's body at her funeral. As Joe mourns, Violet becomes obsessed with the lovers' relationship. Past and present voices, like jazz, quietly sing the blues. Some strong language.
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History, United States travel and geography, United States history, Social issues, Law and crime, General non-fiction, Travel and geography, Biography
Human-narrated audio, Human-transcribed braille
An account of the thoughts and feelings of children involved in school desegregation. Provides background to the 1954 groundbreaking Brown…
v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the movement to eliminate racist laws. For grades 3-6. 2004
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Romance, Serious and literary fiction, Multi-cultural fiction, General fiction, Classic fiction, Family stories, Mysteries and crime stories
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Son, a black fugitive, invades the West Indian home of a retired millionaire, upsetting the racially diverse household. He captivates…
pampered Jadine, a black fashion model. Their ideologically complicated love affair plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan. 2004 foreword by the author. Strong language. 1981
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General fiction, Historical fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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"L'histoire prend place à la fin du XVIIe siècle : à cette époque, les colonies d'Amérique sont à peine nées,…
l'esclavage des Noirs venus d'Afrique est un fait nouveau et n'est pas encore la pierre angulaire de l'économie américaine. Les personnages d'Un don vivent dans une petite ferme isolée du Maryland, propriété de Jacob Vaark, un fermier et négociant anglo-néerlandais marié à Rebekka. Cette jeune Anglaise est l'aînée de sa famille. Ses parents, peu soucieux de son sort, ont décidé de répondre à l'annonce de Jacob qui recherchait "une femme en bonne santé, chaste et désireuse de voyager". Quand on propose à Jacob de prendre à son service la très jeune Florens, en compensation d'un retard de paiement, il y voit la possibilité d'alléger la peine de sa femme, dont aucun enfant n'a survécu. Florens n'a jamais compris pourquoi sa mère avait cherché à se séparer d'elle. C'est sa parole qui ouvre le récit, révélant au lecteur qu'elle a commis un crime de sang qui ne cesse de la hanter". -- 4e de couv
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General fiction, Bestsellers (Fiction)
Human-transcribed braille
1941. Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--poor, ugly, and black--desperately wants blue eyes, which she thinks would solve all her problems. But instead…
she is subjected to rejection, violence, and an unwanted pregnancy. Slowly, she begins to descend into madness. Strong language and some explicit descriptions of sex. Bestseller. 1970
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Family stories
Human-transcribed braille
This novel surveys nearly a century of American history as it impinges upon four generations of a single black family.…
Macon Dead III, known as Milkman, is the first black baby allowed to be born in Mercy Hospital in the 1930s. Milkman undertakes an epic journey into an understanding of his family's heritage and, hence, himself. Strong language and descriptions of sex
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Friendship stories
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Set in an Ohio community called the Bottom, the novel follows two friends, Sula and Nel, from childhood to old…
age and death. Some strong language and explicit descriptions of sex
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Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined…
novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly…
hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing. [This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
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Historical fiction, Serious and literary fiction, War stories
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The new novel from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the…
way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the centre: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish.... Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother ... Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she's suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother ... and Sweetness, Bride's mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."
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Multi-cultural fiction, Serious and literary fiction
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Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and…
as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. A New York Times Bestseller
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Criticism
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved and Jazz now gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary…
criticism that promises to change the way we read American literature even as it opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race. Toni Morrison's brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. She shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. Written with the artistic vision that has earned Toni Morrison a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.
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Criticism
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved and Jazz now gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary…
criticism that promises to change the way we read American literature even as it opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race. Toni Morrison's brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. She shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. Written with the artistic vision that has earned Toni Morrison a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.
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Literature biography, Anthologies, Self help
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At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury…
of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith.Through bricolage--a construction or creation from a diverse range of available things--this brief book aims to limn the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision and achievement. It dramatizes the life of her powerful mind by juxtaposing quotations, one to a page, drawn from her entire body of work, both fiction and non-fiction--from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard.Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation--stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity--addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and authority.
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Anthologies, Essays
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A Vintage Shorts selection.In her elegant yet piercing style, one of our most celebrated and revered writers, Toni Morrison, interrogates…
the writer’s task and responsibility in two illuminating and essential pieces. Initially delivered as parts of lecture series and collected in The Source of Self-Regard, these pieces exhibit the depth with which Morrison probes the capacity and power of literature. An ebook short.