Morrison, Toni "The Bluest Eye"

1970

Reviewed by Marianne

from Let's Read

As always, Toni Morrison has written a fantastic story about the troubles of people who suffer from racism. This is not my favourite book by her (that would be "Beloved") but it is still a great story. We follow the family Breedlove and their friends backwards, to see what they have all been through.

The main character is the little girl that would love blue eyes. While I understand that wish, she wants to be accepted and thinks this is the way to get there, I thought the rest of the story was much more important.

From the back cover:

"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."

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Original Post on Let's Read.

Read more about other books by the author here.

Morrison, Toni "Home"

2012


Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read




Toni Morrison is one of my favourite authors. I love her writing so much. She manages to describe anything in a way that you feel you've been there, you know the characters in her book.

Like Frank Money, the protagonist in this novel. He has survived the Korean War, well, physically. After a more than difficult childhood, he and his sister don't continue to have an easy adulthood, you find almost any form of abuse and problem in this novel.

I know I will still think about this novel for a long time.

From the back cover:

"When Frank Money joined the army to escape his too-small world, he left behind his cherished and fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, his shattered life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in danger.

Frank is a modern Odysseus returning to a 1950s America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary black man. As he journeys to his native Georgia in search of Cee, it becomes clear that their troubles began well before their wartime separation. Together, they return to their rural hometown of Lotus, where buried secrets are unearthed and where Frank learns at last what it means to be a man, what it takes to heal, and -- above all -- what it means to come home."


Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. 


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Morrison, Toni "Beloved"

1987

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read

 

This is one of my favourite books ever. The author uses a lot of symbolism unknown to us, yet, explains the world of the slaves so lively, you can really feel their pains. It covers love, friendship, life in a community, describes how different people cope with the same problem and gives you a lot to think about.

It has also been made into a fantastic movie - and I don't say that very often about books made into film. 


From the back cover: 

"It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution. Beloved is a dense, complex novel, mixing past and present, destined to become a twentieth-century American classic."

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the Pulitzer Prize for "Beloved" in 1988. 

Read more about other books by the author here. 



Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Morrison, Toni "A Mercy"

2008

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read 

 

In my post about Anti-Racism, I listed many, many books that tell us a lot about the lives of black people past and present. This is another one from the past that I will add to that list.

In this day and age, nobody should have to suffer from being "different" (no matter what that entails) and, yet, so many still do. When I see all the accusations made against former US President Barack Obama, it shows that even when you have worked your way up and are an excellent, qualified person, it doesn't help you if people don't like the colour of your skin. You still get no respect.

In this story, Toni Morrison tells us all about a little girl called Florens. She is lucky in a way that she gets into this family. Her "master" is not abusive. That doesn't say she is to envy. If you can't decide where you want to live, whether you want to stay with your family (and which eight-year-old wouldn't?) or what kind of work you would like to do, you are never to be envied.

Having said that, I'm just reading another book ("Capital" by Karl Marx) and from what we can learn there, poor people in Europe were not in a much better position, either. However, that's not an excuse.

Coming back to this story. It's not just a story of Florens but of all the male members of that family, the Native American Lina, Sorrow who was shipwrecked and Rebecca, the owner's wife who was sent over from England and didn't know her husband before she got married. They all have a different kind of fate but are all in this together.

Toni Morrison knows well how to describe the feelings of her characters, you can follow her stories as if you were a member of the family, as if you were one of the characters in her book.

Her books should become a required reading in all the schools. Maybe, just maybe, we would all understand racism a little better. Her Nobel Prize is well-deserved.

Florens' mother describes her arrival in Barbados after her capture in Africa and a long sea voyage:
"It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families. I was negrita. Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance, habits, decoration, song– all of it cooked together in the colour of my skin."

I think this says it all. What is it that defines us? Certainly not the colour of our skin. You might as well say someone with dark (or light hair) is worth less than someone with light (or dark). What's the difference? The difference is only what some of us make of it.

From the back cover:

"On the day that Jacob agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt, little Florens' life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress Florens has never blended into the background and now, aged eight, she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob's household, along with his wife Rebekka, their Native American servant Lina and the enigmatic Sorrow, who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of the north of America in the seventeenth century."

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Read more about other books by the author here.

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Morrison, Toni "Love"

2003

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read



Different from her usual novels but just as exciting and interesting. Toni Morrison manages to describe so many different women, all in love with the same guy, Bill Cosey. A lot of different characters, a lot of different subjects: love, rivalry, charity, struggles. Every woman loves him in their own special, has her own special reason for her love, he is different with every woman again, a story about all the different faces of love.

I really like the author and her books.

From the back cover:

May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida -- even L: all women obsessed by Bill Cosey. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, he shapes their yearnings for father, husband, lover, guardian, friend, yearnings that dominate the lives of these women long after his death. Yet while he is both the void in, and the centre of, their stories, he himself is driven by secret forces -- a troubled past and a spellbinding woman named Celestial.

This audacious vision of the nature of love -- its appetite, its sublime possession, its dread -- is rich in characters and striking scenes, and in its profound understanding of how alive the past can be."

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Read more about other books by the author here.   


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

Although many tried to establish objective criteria for beauty, the wisdom that “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” could never be defeated. Nonetheless, it would be too easy to leave it at beauty being a matter of personal taste because from the moment we are born we are exposed to the opinion of others and we can’t help internalising their standards. In Europe the ideal of a beautiful body often tends to be Nordic, i.e. since Roman times or even longer, fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes have a particular appeal to beholders. European discoverers and settlers carried this idea of human beauty into the New World and so the African American protagonist of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison learnt early to despise herself for her looks. She prays to God for blue eyes that will make her beautiful and happy, but of course, that’s not how it works.

Toni Morrision was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, USA, in February 1931. She studied English at Howard and Cornell University and then became an English instructor at different universities. After her marriage to Herold Morrison had failed, she also dedicated herself to editing text books and literature, but only in 1970 she made her literary debut with the novella The Bluest Eye which was followed by the much acclaimed novels Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), and Jazz (1992). In 1993 she received the Nobel Prize in Literature and continued to write fiction and non-fiction along with a few sidesteps into children’s literature and drama. Her latest novels are Paradise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012), and God Help the Child (2015). Toni Morrison died in New York City, USA, in August 2019.

The Bluest Eye is the story of twelve-year-old Pecola Breedlove and covers the time between autumn 1941 through the end of the summer of 1942. The principal narrator is Claudia MacTeer, a nine-year-old girl from the poor African-American community of largely white Lorain in Ohio, USA. She and her ten-year-old sister Frieda grow up in an atmosphere of mutual love and care, but when Pecola comes to live with them as a foster child after her drunken father set fire to their home, the sisters inevitably get involved in her tragic fate. In fact, Pecola has experienced nothing but hardship, quarrel and violence in her life. Moreover, everybody including the children of the neighbourhood always told her how ugly she was until she was convinced that she was despicable because she was so unlike her great idol, pretty white Shirley Temple whom nobody could help loving and treating well. As soon as Mrs. Breedlove finds a new home for them, Pecola returns to her family, but her father Cholly continues to drink heavily and her mother Pauline, who strives to make ends meet working as servant and caretaker at the house of a rich white family, keeps reproaching him. They quarrel and beat up each other. One day Cholly returns home drunken as usual and finds Pecola washing dishes in the kitchen. The girl reminds him of Pauline when he first saw her and he is overcome with love and anger at the same time. His contorted mind urges him to express his feelings by raping his daughter. Pauline doesn’t believe Pecola when she tells her with the result that before long it happens again leaving the girl pregnant and shunned by the neighbours. In her desperation, Pecola sets her hopes in God praying fervently for blue eyes to make her life better…

Although The Bluest Eye is primarily a first-person narrative, the point of view of the story shifts ever again from the necessarily limited one of Claudia as a nine-year-old or as an adult looking back to that of an omniscient as well as detached third-person narrator. This is inevitable since she can know nothing about the harmful past of Cholly and Pauline Breedlove, nor about the events surrounding Pecola when she isn’t with her friends. On the other hand, the atmosphere of the USA in the early 1940s, when the country entered World War II and slowly got out of the Great Depression, becomes particularly vivid through her eyes. Repeatedly the author introduces sections quoting from a children’s book about a white family that seems to be titled Dick and Jane and well-known in the English-speaking world. She does this reprinting the same sentences over and over again omitting spaces and stopping mid-word, probably to evoke the notion of thoughts revolving in the mind without end. In addition, the white-American idyll from the book contrasts with reality of African-American people in the segregated country, particularly that of Pecola. Thanks to dealing with taboo topics like incest and molestation of minors, the novella has been subject of great polemics ever since its release in 1970 that couldn’t prevent it from becoming a classic, though. The language is appropriate and appealing to the reader.

All things considered, I enjoyed The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison very much, notably because it skilfully shows how the social environment shapes the individual… and breaks without mercy those who are the weakest. It’s a meritorious book that all parents and teachers should read to remind them of their responsibility and power. I highly recommend it for reading.

Original post on Edith's Miscellany:

http://edith-lagraziana.blogspot.com/2015/11/bluest-eye-by-toni-morrison.html

Paradise by Toni Morrison

1998

Reviewed by Marianne from "Let's Read"

I love Toni Morrison, I really do. But I had a hard time getting through this book and I still didn’t understand it completely.

There are just too many unanswered questions in this scenario. Like – who is the white girl? I still haven’t figured that out.

I loved the story itself, the description of that small town life. I know it too well, growing up in a small village about half a century ago. She did get that right.

At the beginning, I didn’t understand who belonged to whom. So I started an old trick of mine and made a list of all the characters, a little note of their story and how they were related to each other. It got a little easier but I still can’t figure out who the white girl was ...

However, this is a completely typical Toni Morrison book, the description of the characters, the storyline, the everyday scenario, the relationship, the difference between the races, the genders, the rich and the poor. Toni Morrison is THE author when it comes to racism in the United States, I don't think anyone can portray this feeling better than she can. So, any of her books is worth reading. Even more than once. But it certainly is not a novel you can read "in between", "on the go" or "at the beach". It deserves a little more attention.

From the back cover: "Four young women are brutally attacked in a convent near an all-black town in America in the mid-1970s. The inevitability of this attack, and the attempts to avert it, lie at the heart of Paradise. Spanning the birth of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the counter culture and the politics of the late 1970s, deftly manipulating past, present and future, this novel of mysterious motives reveals the interior lives of the citizens of the town with astonishing clarity. The drama of its people - from the four young women and their elderly protector, to conservative businessmen, rednecks, a Civil Rights minister and veterans of three wars - richly evokes clashes that have bedevilled American society: between race and racelessness; patriarchy and matriarchy; religion and magic; freedom and belonging; promiscuity and fidelity. Magnificent in its scope, Paradise is a revelation in the intensity of its potrayal of human complexity and in the sheer force of its narrative."

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Home by Toni Morrison

Weeks later, when her baby, delivered on a mattress in Reverend Baily’s church basement, turned out to be a girl, mama named her Ycidra, taking care to pronounce all three syllables. Of course, she waited the nine days before naming, lest death notice fresh life and eat it. Everybody but Mama calls her “Cee.” I always thought it was nice, how she thought about the nae, treasured it. As for me, no such memories. I am named Frank after my father’s brother. Luther is my father’s name, Ida my mother’s. The crazy part is our last name. Money. Of which we had none. - from Home, page 40 -

Frank Money has returned from the Korean War with anger, regret, guilt and the need for redemption. He arrives back in an America where racism is still dividing the country. As he travels to his hometown of Lotus, Georgia to rescue his little sister from an abusive situation, he remembers scenes from his childhood. His memory of Lotus is not a good one and he does not think of the place as home.

Lotus, Georgia, is the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield. At least on the field there is a goal, excitement, daring, and some chance of winning along with many chances of losing. Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can’t know in advance. – from Home, page 83 -

But, what Frank finds in Lotus is not just a sister in need, but something less tangible that binds him to the place. Deep in the south he finds himself immersed in the rich African-American culture and reconnecting to the people who are there to carry him forward.

Toni Morrison’s newest novel explores the scars of war (both physical and emotional), the depths of grief and regret, and the road to recovery. Morrison does not spare the reader the ugliness of racism in the mid-century south, a blight on American life which robbed people of their dignity and freedoms. She also touches on the medical experimentation which impacted black women during that time – something I had very little knowledge of until I read this novel. I researched this topic after reading Home and found this article which notes:

In the US South, throughout the the 1960s and 1970s, federally funded welfare state programs underwrote the coercive sterilization of thousands of poor black women. Under threat of termination of welfare benefits or denial of medical care, many black women “consented” to sterilization procedures. Within southern black communities knowledge of the routine imposition of non-consensual and medically-unnecessary sterilization on black women was well known – a practice so common it came to be known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” (Roberts 2000)

Home is a sparse book (less than 150 pages) which packs a big punch. Morrison’s writing is poetic, rich, and character-driven. She makes a huge impact on the reader with very few words – one reason, I believe, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Readers who appreciate literary fiction will want to read Home, a novel about a man who must return to his past in order to move forward into his future.
Recommended.

The Bluest Eye (a.k.a: L’Oeil le plus bleu) by Toni Morrison

Originally posted at: A Girl that Likes Books on May 22, 2012

***

Book Summary (from Goodreads.com)

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedlove's garden do not bloom, Pecola's life does change--in painful, devastating ways.

With it's vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels--and a significant work of American fiction.

My Review

This is the first novel I’ve ever read from Toni Morrison. I decided to start form the beginning of her work, as recommended by The Book Lady. I have to say, I loved the book, but it was a hard one. Not because it was in French, the language is not complicated and the story is so beautifully written, that even translated you are transported and you read and read.

The story takes place in 1941; about 20 years before the March on Washington African-Americans were emancipated, but oppression is still there (did it ever leave?). On the other hand, the country is trying to recover from the Great Depression, and the poor are even poorer. A poor neighbourhood, full of worker families is the environment for the whole story’s development.  Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, too young sisters start the telling of the story, as witnesses of events. Pecola, another girl from a broken home, comes to stay with them, while her family recovers from a burning home...incidentally it started burning because her father set it on fire. 

Pecola, as a lot of young girls, doesn’t feel happy with her looks. Add to that the effect that all the “pretty” standards are white, blond girls. See, this was the first time I had to put the book down, fighting tears of rage, remembering how this hasn’t changed much. How the standard of beauty that a lot of girls grow with is just hurtful for them. I remembered my little cousin (by then 4 years old) feeling ugly because her hair was not blond and straight...she has the most beautiful black hair, slightly wavy and green eyes...but no, that’s not how Cinderella looks like is it? Anyway, moving on, this just one of the hard topics in the book, how a tiny girl, reaching puberty is so discontent with her looks, because she is convinced NOBODY will ever love her unless she has blue eyes.

Little by little, we get to know the story behind her drunken father Cholly, why is he in the position he is. Now, this will make you understand his behaviour, but in no way condone it. A child from problematic childhood grows into a man full of grudges, and unfortunately, he takes it on others instead of trying to give a better childhood to his own kids.

Mrs Breedlove (Pauline), Pecola’s mother had a nice childhood, up to a certain point. She fell in love with Cholly and then...well, thing went downhill, and she has been building up bitterness, that again falls over her kids and her household.

Around this family, there’s a gossipy community that will talk about the problems, but sadly won’t help to solve them. Prostitutes with a heart of gold, a con-artist with a conscience, a girl with slightly paler skin that is looked up as “better” than the others because of her looks; all of them secondary characters that little by little takes us to the resolution of the story.

What do I think about the book? It was amazing, you feel every single bit of pain, physical or emotional, and you want to cry quietly for half of the characters. Is NOT a feel good book, but is a powerful one. The way the environment is constructed, as I mentioned, transports you to every house in the community, you feel the scents, the sun or the cold of winter. You want to take Pecola in your arms and tell her that she is a beautiful human being, that nothing happening around her is her fault. You want to slap her fathers and make them snap out of their pain constructed reality.

The book touches different hard subjects. The concept of beauty is just one of them. Morality, injustice all of them aggravated by latent racism and a family that is just not there for a little girl. Because of this, it is not a book to take with you to sleep, trust me; you will feel sometimes so disgusted at situations or at the fact that some of those situations are still common nowadays that you will need time to cool off.  Personally I needed a couple of days to be able to write this, without giving much away, particularly in the parts that made me utterly emotional. 

Beloved by Toni Morrison (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

Beloved is a wonderful book even though it is deeply disturbing to read.   It was published in 1987, it won the Pulitzer Prize and Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.  Why it has taken me more than 20 years to get round to reading it, and how I came to miss the movie, I can’t explain….

It’s the story of Sethe, in post Civil War Ohio, coming to terms with a freedom which has not really set her free.  The narrative leaks unwelcome intrusions from her past into the present and it presents multiple voices, but Sethe is the central character.  A former slave, she has lost so much and she is such a damaged person that I found it hard to reconcile this depiction of a former slave with Lawrence Hill’s Someone Knows My Name.  I had reservations about the resilience of the character Aminata at the time of reading Hill’s book, and Beloved reinforces my view that the impact of slavery on the pysche is, in Someone Knows My Name, somewhat sanitised.   

Sethe’s house, No 124, is haunted by her dead toddler, and everyone avoids the place.  Her grandmother, Baby Suggs, has not long died and Sethe lives there alone with her surviving daughter, Denver, until Paul D turns up.  He is a former slave also from the ironically named plantation Sweet Home, and his arrival triggers the presence of Beloved, who seems to be an adult reincarnation of the dead child.

I read and blogged this book on June 27th 2009.  To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/beloved-by-toni-morrison/

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Reviewed by Sandra at Fresh Ink Books

Fiction, 167 pages HardcoverUS (2008)

A seemingly short novel at 167 pages and narrated in lyrical language by several voices, A Mercy is in fact an intense and often internalized perspective on the effects of slavery on the human mind and heart. In colonial America of the late 1600s, life is harsh for most people and brutal for slaves. With disease, food shortages, and backbreaking work to contend with, the land is rugged and even the weather seems to conspire against you.

Our story centers around Florens, a young slave girl who been accepted reluctantly by a Dutch landowner to pay off a debt owed him. He was offered her mother but the slave mother begged him to take the daughter, thinking that Florens would have a better life with him than with her own brutal, rapist master. Viewpoint shifts as chapters are spoken in different voices, including those of Lina, an old Indian woman whose tribe has been wiped out by smallpox. Sorrow, a lone shipwreck survivor, Rebekka, the childless landowner's wife and Florens mother will all have their say here too. Each will speak in their own voice, something Morrison accomplishes better than most, revealing more about themselves than observation or simple narration could tell us.

Belonging is a strong thread throughout the story, being motherless and yearning for family and closeness, or being childless in the case of their mistress. Lina thinks of young Florens as "love-disabled" because of the way she tries to get close to her, and then to others, including a black freeman who rebuffs her for, among other things, having a slave mentality. There is so much here that the story seemed almost condensed to me. This is not a fast read for most, the story should be read slowly, the language is rich, almost dense at times, and needs to be savoured. But what a powerful story it is. And what it leads us to is the realization that what to some may seem like an act of mercy may in fact feel like an act of abandonment.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison - 3M's Review

I’m sort of at a loss when it comes to writing about Toni Morrison’s books. There’s always that element of genius in her work — I would say she’s a very worthy Nobel laureate. Somehow, though, her books always make me very uncomfortable. I guess they’re meant to do that. I always seem to absorb the emotions of the characters — which normally is a good thing — but oh, the depths of the emotions the characters experience! I probably did like A Mercy better than others I’ve read so far, though perhaps Beloved will still be considered her masterpiece.
This story takes place in the 1680’s, in the wilds of a new America. Jacob is a man who disapproves of the slave trade yet makes concessions toward it. His wife Rebekka is a mail order bride from England, yet the two have a happy marriage. On their land they do have ‘help’ in the form of Lina, a Native-American, Sorrow, an orphan from the sea, and Florens, a slave girl given up by her mother whom Jacob takes as payment for a debt. Together they try to build a home for themselves, fighting against a harsh climate, disease, and inside and outside forces that seem bent on destruction.
With themes of racism, slavery, adventure, religion, and witchcraft, A Mercy is another brilliant work by a very brilliant author.
2008, 167 pages
Rating: 4.5/5

Beloved by Toni Morrisson (Athena)

This Pulitzer Prize winning and critically acclaimed novel is very sad and includes many stories of horror and trauma. The persistence of memory and the past is part of the novel from a mother's obsessive overprotection to the reconciliation of people's past personal and with slavery as a whole: "To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The 'better life' she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one."

The narrative shifts with a stream of consciousness writing towards the end of the book. It also reminded me of an even more twisted version of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray by that time.

It's a complex novel, but very beautifully written. I love the prose. It is difficult to read due to the story and plot, but the literary prose is wonderful. Morrison is also very adept at characterization. I get a total sense of these characters whether or not I agree or actually sympathise with them. She presents them so clearly and honestly. It is not a pleasurable read, and like many books literary books, it is not for everyone. It's difficult, but honest and well written.

This is my second book for the challenge.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Wendy)

The song of songs, which is Solomon's. - From Chapter One, Song of Solomon, The Bible -

With her father as her muse, Toni Morrison has created a memorable African American family with strong male characters in her novel The Song of Solomon. The novel opens with an insurance agent attempting to fly and therefore diving to his death off of Mercy (referred to as No Mercy) hospital in 1931. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel - a novel about flight and self discovery...mystical, triumphant, and disturbing.

Morrison's story centers around the Dead family composed of Macon (the abusive, yet savvy father), Ruth (the mother - a sad woman whose grief for her dead father defines her life), First Corinthians (a daughter both beautiful and educated who stumbles in her search for a lover), Magdalene called Lena (the second daughter), and finally Milkman (Macon's son). There are other important characters as part of the extended family - namely Pilate, Macon's free spirited sister who lives with her daughter Reba and Reba' daughter Hager.

There are many themes and much symbolism throughout the book, and I found myself marking passages and re-reading paragraphs to make sense of them. First and foremost, the novel is about discovery of one's roots, and the painful search for love. Milkman starts his life fighting to avoid murder at the hands of his father, and this theme continues through the book ending with Milkman's protracted journey from his home in Michigan to his grandparent's home in Virginia. Along the way, Milkman's views of life are challenged and his connection to his roots are strengthened. Another strong theme in the novel is that of racism and the struggle of blacks in American to overcome the history of slavery. Finally, the idea of taking flight and finding oneself is replayed over and over in the book. In one memorable scene, Milkman and his friend Guitar observe a white peacock. Milkman asks why the peacock struggles to fly and Guitar says:

"Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." -From Song of Solomon, page 179-

I avoided reading a Morrison novel for a long time because I had heard that Morrison's books were often difficult reads with weighty themes. And this is certainly true. But despite this, I found myself looking forward to picking up the book. Morrison writes beautifully and is a superb storyteller. Although she is sometimes heavy handed with the symbolism, I didn't find it distracting from the story. I found myself caring deeply about the characters in Song of Solomon, even those who were not terribly likable.

Song of Solomon has been banned in the United States for "language degrading to blacks," violent imagery, sexually explicit and profane language and depictions of sexuality. It has been accused of promoting a "homosexual agenda." There is profanity, violence and sex in the novel, but it is not gratuitous.

Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her body of work, and I can certainly see why based on this book alone. I will be reading more of Toni Morrison in the future.

Song of Solomon is highly recommended; rated 4.5/5.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (3M)

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a quick read, but by no means is it easy or light. With subjects of poverty, inc*st, and racial self-loathing (Morrison's own description), it is difficult at times to read.

It starts off with a sappy reading of Dick and Jane, and continues on with why not all homes are the same as Dick and Jane's. Morrison draws each character so well, and 11 year-old Pecola, especially, is a girl I won't soon forget. My edition had an afterward by the author which gave even more insight into what she was trying to accomplish with this book.

Although The Bluest Eye was very depressing, I can see why Morrison has many fans. I hope to get to Beloved later this year.

1970, 206 pp.
Rating: 4

Originally posted at 1morechapter.com

Interview with Toni Morrison

For those planning to read Toni Morrison, 1993 Nobel Laureate, here is an interesting video which gives us some insight on her work.

An hour conversation with Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison about her publications "The Bluest Eye", "Sula" and "Song of Solomon". She discusses the impact of the publication of "Beloved" in 1987, her Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and her book "Paradise", which details the social upheaval that affects a small, proud all-black town over time.

Cheers to the New Year, and to new reads!