• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.61-76
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• 2018

This essay examines Toni Morrison's African-American characters' struggle in The Bluest Eye (1970) and Home (2012) through the lens of heteronormativity, arguing that they suffer double victimization due to both their race and gender. The Bluest Eye portrays a family tragedy caused by an African-American husband and wife's failure to live up to images of gender as represented in white, middle-class media. Written forty-two years later, Home describes an African-American man and woman who establish their own lives away from gendered standards after striving to meet social expectations and becoming traumatized in the process. Their adversities stem not only from the deeply rooted racial discrimination in American society but also from subtle gendered norms implanted by heteronormativity. Morrison's characters in her earlier narrative face a tragic denouement, ultimately destroying their children's lives. By contrast, Morrison's later characters explore more utopian ways of life unfettered by heteronormativity, overcoming hardships imposed by white-centered heteronormal society. By portraying socially victimized characters, Toni Morrison problematizes the power behind the discriminatory nature of heteronormativity and suggests a more gender-neutral, egalitarian way of organizing society, free from the constraints of heterosexuality and from violence created by normalized gender rules.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.167-187
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• 2005

This paper tries to follow Toni Morrison's postcolonial courses in her novels. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison examines the situation in which the white's values are the standard for the whole society through two little black girls, Pecola and Claudia. In Song of Solomon she recommends emulating Pilate's love and good attitude towards tradition to shape a positive identity for Afro-Americans, which Milkman comes to accept. In Tar Baby, Morrison suggests that Son's and Jadine's ideas, traditional and modern, should be combined. In Beloved, Morrison illustrates one of the ways in which all blacks can escape from their own trauma through Sethe's process of finding her self-worth. In Paradise Morrison shows that the real de-colonial way to overcome the effects of colonization is to create a new paradigm in which everyone is respected regardless of race. In her works, Morrison insists that by remembering and regretting slavery in America, people can overcome its aftereffects and trauma. Racial oppression still exists today, so Morrison will continue her beautiful, powerful and eye-opening work.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.31-63
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• 2018

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes and practices of life demanded for authentic existence in adversity, focusing on Toni Morrison's Home which was published in 2012. Home portrays the journey of Frank Money, an African-American veteran of the Korean War who strives to extricate his sister Cee from inhumane violence. Through this work, Morrison criticizes prevalent racism in the 1950s which is regarded as a time of affluence and peace through this sibling's agony. In this paper, firstly I attempt to examine the aspects of racism which Frank and Cee face and their distorted survival strategies. Secondly I try to find the right direction of brother and sister relationship based on Frank and Cee who are compared to Hansel and Gretel. Thirdly I try to point out the importance of self-reflection required for the healing process of Frank and Cee who overcome adversity and restore their identity with the help of Samaritans. And I investigate the possibility of ethical practice going beyond my family to strangers.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.5
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• pp.813-838
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• 2011

Toni Morrison's ninth novel A Mercy delves into the colonial American history of the seventeenth century when Europeans began to migrate to the New World and when the first slaves were brought to Virginia. Morrison presents a diverse group of people such as white Europeans, an American Indian, a free black man, indentured servants, and slaves from Africa in order to explore the subjects of ownership, freedom and racism. She emphasizes the fact that most of the Europeans who came to America in the early seventeenth century were the people who were thrown out from the society such as felons, prostitutes, servants and children. By portraying how these castaways tried to settle in a new environment surrounded by unknown dangers and challenges, Morrison demystifies and reconstructs the myth of the birth of America as a nation state. In continuation of Morrison's writings about love and the betrayal of love, her novel A Mercy explores the subjects of trauma, memory and subjectivity by choosing the topic of motherly love and its betrayal which she dealt with poignantly in Beloved. The female protagonist, Florens, is given away by her mother in partial payment of debt incurred by the owner of Florens's mother. The traumatic memory of Florens's separation from her mother shapes Florence's character. She has to revisit the site of the original traumatic experiences of being given up by her mother in order to reconstruct her fragmented memory and past. The recurring dream of the traumatic incident that takes hold of Florens can be explained by the trauma theory of Freud, Cathy Caruth, Suzette Henke, and Judith Herman. The paper explores the self journey of Florens in which she faces the traumatic past and comprehends its meaning which enables her to construct her subjectivity by understanding the true meaning of being free and of owning oneself. In particular, it demonstrates how the process of writing a confession, a story about one's history, enables one to reclaim the traumatic experience and to locate it in the narrative memory.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.32
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• pp.63-79
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• 2013

Tar Baby, Toni Morrison's fourth novel re examines the problem that black characters face in negotiatiating a place for themselves within a dominant culture, with respect to their own history and culture. The novel critiques the dominant socio economic and commodifying cultural space from which the black woman seems to have no escape. Jadine is a colonized subject, for as a fashion model she has surrendered to an aesthetics of commodification, and as a student of art history, she has internalized the capitalist ethic of the white culture industry. Though she has ensured her freedom, Morrison's critique of her separation from her family and culture is unmistakable. Interwoven with her narrative is Son's predicament, the stereotype of a black racist and her 'lover'. The novel ends with him at the crossroads of culture, yet signaling his passage to freedom through resistance. The paper arguments how Toni Morrison has envisioned the welfare of African American community by reconstructing the role of new black generation, as represented by Jadine and Son, whose new journey towards their self fulfillment just not only bring their personal freedom but also regenerates African American community by resisting dominant commodifying cultural.

• American Studies
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.211-229
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• 2021

Toni Morrison's A Mercy (2008) describes Jacob Vaark, an early settler from England, and his grand house that symbolizes the American Dream in the 1680s. The source of his success is colonialism and slavery, as revealed by four female characters-a white Englishwoman Rebekka and three non-white women Florens, Sorrow, and Lina. Analyzing how the novel compares the women's experiences with nature and natural objects, this paper draws on ecofeminism as a theoretical frame of analysis to examine the novel's hitherto overlooked representations of naturalized women and feminized nature. The paper analyzes how the novel represents oppressions and exploitations of the four women in relation to nature that is similarly appropriated and developed by European men. The paper maintains that the novel does not represent these "naturalized" women as powerless and passive but portrays them as growing characters who resist patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.29-45
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to research how the writer describes characters of the text who overcome traumatic experiences and restore their identity through rememory in Toni Morrison's Beloved. The writer, Morrison gives the female characters their voices to recover their ethnic identities. By breaking silence, they establish their identities and become Americans from "unspeakable thoughts" to "speaking subjects." The ex-slave Sethe and her daughter, Denver have experienced trauma which works from traces of memory and history after slavery was abolished. Sethe and Denver are isolated from the community at the 124 Bluestone Road. When Beloved, ghost who was killed by Sethe, appears, Sethe and Denver are wondering who she is. Rememorying in Beloved is the important form of narrative that Morrison uses to recover their trauma. Morrison emphasizes the need to reconcile with the community and the aid of community for Sethe and Denver to heal their truma. Thanks to Beloved who leads Sethe and Denver to the community, they can be finally one of the community members in America.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1221-1244
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• 2009

The death scenes are the culmination of both Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen" and Toni Morrison's Sula. Lessing's Susan, an intelligent white English woman, gradually loses the meaning of life as awealthy housewife in the patriarchal society and commits suicide as her solution in Room Nineteen of Fred's Hotel. Morrison's Sula, an African-American woman, grows up without having the normal ego under Eva's matriarchy in a black community named the Bottom. Sula, after Nel's marriage, becomes a symbol of evil to her community and drifts down to death in Eva's bed. Reading these two death stories from the perspective of Jung's archetypal psychology, Susan is not able to continue to live a meaningful life because her life energy is cut off from its source which is in the unconscious. According to Jung, the symbol is the medium of the psychic energy from the unconscious to consciousness. In modern society which is represented by intelligence, the religious and mythical symbols are removed by rationalism, which means disconnection of the flow of life energy from the unconscious. Susan's death can be read as a kind of creating symbol to connect the modern people to the source of life energy. Sula's case is the opposite of Susan's. She remains in the unconscious world without having the proper ego in the absurd reality of racial and sexual problems. Sula finally rises again in Nel's awareness, becoming a symbol of the feminine goddess like goddess Inanna.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.331-344
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to explore sorts and roles of Afro-American music genres such as jazz, blues, gospel, and swing which were shown in post-structural Afro-American literary works: Toni Morrison's novel Jazz, Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, and August Wilson's play The Piano Lesson. It has been phenomenal for several important Afro-American writers to create their works in which they invite traditional Afro-American music genres. This has made significant effects to depict a wide range of episodes in their works, which are historically and culturally associated with such music genres. This paper analyzes varied ways in which the writers combine these two artistic fields, which are all Afro-American, and express their authenticity and identity as being blackness.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.409-427
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• 2010

In this paper, I revisit and problematize "blackness" in THH by building on Toni Morrison's call for the theorization of "blackness" in American literature. THH has received much critical attention in the decades that followed its revival, but this paper argues that the meaning of "Africanist presence" has not been adequately addressed in 19th-century women writers' works. This paper is an effort to fill in this gap, and examines the ways in which "blackness" informed and shaped this most popular text of 19th-century America. This paper argues that THH demonstrates contemporary America's fear of "blackness," and rather than celebrating Capitola's feminist credentials or criticizing the lack of sensitivity to racial issues in THH, shows that the significance of the text lies in the ways in which it prophesies an impending national crisis mediated through the disruptive force of Capitola and Black Donald. THH certainly reiterates the popular, contemporary racial paradigms and excludes blacks from the conceptualization of "manhood," and it may seem that the issue of race is subsumed under gender issues when the text continuously privileges gender over race. However, at the same time, Black Donald and Capitola's disruptive energies signify the fear of explosive "blackness," and the disruptive stirrings of "blackness" permeate the novel as the energy that might rupture the seemingly tranquil order of antebellum South. The novel encodes and reflects the fear of blackness in the minds of its readers, and the popularity of this novel foretells nothing less than the explosion of Civil War.