The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison

by Kelly Reames (Editor), Linda Wagner-Martin (Editor)

Overview

The most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women's writing.

The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison's writing within today's currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison's “trilogy” of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos' USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of “influence” that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner. Another cluster of essays treats seldom-discussed works by Morrison, including an essay on Morrison as writer of children's books and as speaker for children's education. In addition, a “Teaching Morrison” section is designed to help teachers and critics who teach Morrison in undergraduate classes.

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is wide-ranging, provocative, and satisfying; a fitting tribute to one of the greatest American novelists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350239920
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/12/2023
Series:	Bloomsbury Handbooks
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Kelly Reames is Associate Professor of English at Western Kentucky Unviersity, USA.

Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She was the 2011 recipient of the Hubbell Medal for lifetime service in American literature (sponsored by the MLA), and has received the Guggenheim fellowship, the senior National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, the Bunting Institute fellowship, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Philosophical Association and others. She has published more than fifty-five books of criticism, some edited, including Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and “Favored Strangers”: Gertrude Stein and Her Family (1995), as well as studies of Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. Recent books are A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present (2013) and Toni Morrison and the Maternal (2014).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Contributors
Foreword “Toni Morrison: A Friend of My Mind,” Deborah E. McDowell
Acknowledgments
Introduction Kelly L. Reames and Linda Wagner-Martin
Part One: Morrison's Novels
1. “The Sight and Sound of Intersectionality in The Bluest Eye”
Corinne Bancroft
2. “Re-Visiting the Unspeakable: Can Soaphead Church Be Redeemed?”
Trudier Harris
3. “Do You Believe in Magic? #BlackGirlMagic in The Bluest Eye”
James A. Crank
4. “'Is? My Baby? Burbaning?': Segregation, Soldiers, and Civil Rights in Toni Morrison's Sula”
Thomas Fahy
5. “Toni Morrison's Female Epistemology: Post-nationalism, Diaspora, and Postcolonial Futures in Tar Baby, Mouth Full of Blood, and Paradise”
Justine Baillie
6. “'How Can I Say Things That Are Pictures?' Foregrounding in Beloved”
Jennifer Larson
7. “Rootlessness: Afro-Pessimism as Foundation in Paradise”
Keith Clark
8. “Love: Toni Morrison's African American Gothic”
Jameela F. Dallis
9. “'A Home for the Heart': Rootlessness, Richard Wright, and Morrison's Home,”
Leslie Elaine Frost
10. “The Ancestor, Passing, and Imagination in Toni Morrison's God Help the Child”
Janine Bradbury
11. “Arcs of Transcendence: The Religious Imagination of Toni Morrison”
Gurleen Grewal
Part Two: Morrison and the Contemporary World
12. “'Unforgetting': Toni Morrison's Beloved and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice”
Kristina K. Groover
13. “Blues Lives Matter: Reading Jazz in the Era of George Floyd”
Andrew Scheiber
14. “Margaret Garner in History, Opera, and as Inspiration for Beloved”
Kristine Yohe
15. “Faulkner after Morrison”
David H. Krause
16. “Prospects for the Public Uses of 'Toni Morrison'”
Kirk Curbanutt
17. “Going to Ground in Home: Morrison's Mid-Century Political Modernism”
Thadious M. Davis
18. “'Only white folks got the freedom to hate home': Strategic Empathy and Expanded Intersectionality since Morrison's Home”
Marijana Mikic and Derek C. Maus
Part Three: Morrison Teaching, Teaching Morrison
19. “Toni Morrison and the Politics of Literary Generosity”
Michael Nowlin
20. “Soldiers, Identity, and Trauma: Teaching Home in a War Literature Course”
Jennifer Haytock
21. “Cotton Mather's Witches and Toni Morrison's Paradise”
Janie Hinds
22. “'What are you without racism?': Toni Morrison on Perfectionism and White Supremacy”
Christopher S. Lewis
23. “Teaching Morrison's Sula in the Post-Racial Moment”
Marc Dudley
24. “'Understanding All Too Well What is Meant': Teaching Toni Morrison's 'Recitatif'”
Catherine Seltzer
25. “Toni Morrison's Home: One Scene, Four Takes”
Trudier Harris
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
12.1 National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, 2020
Photo: Kristina K. Groover
12.2 National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, 2020
Photo: Kristina K. Groover

Editorial Reviews

This rich cornucopia of insights and analysis by some of our most important scholars of American literature belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in the work of America's greatest novelist and social commentator, Toni Morrison.” —Cathy N. Davidson, Senior Advisor to the Chancellor on Transformation and Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

“This is a mighty and necessary tome. Its complexity, fullness, and thoughtfulness compose a model of due diligence. It will be a critical resource for students and scholars as it “re-members” Toni Morrison's extraordinary oeuvre in ways that assist, provoke, probe and consider the composure of her literary genius. This generous guide beautifully excavates Morrison's declaration that “we do language…[the]…measure of our lives.”” —Karla FC Holloway, James B. Duke Professor Emerita of English and Law, Duke University, USA

“The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is a generative, multi-perspectival resource for teachers, students, and/or general readers. It illuminates many facets of and approaches to Morrison's wide-ranging work across genres, eras, geographies, and expressive mediums.” —María DeGuzmán, Eugene H. Falk Distinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

“The essays in this ambitious and multidimensional volume are thorough analyses that both deepen and broaden perspectives on Morrison in complex ways … [An] impressive and comprehensive volume.” —Contemporary Women's Writing

From the Publisher