Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison was perhaps the greatest American writer of her time, leaving behind an impressive body of work that transcended borders when she died, aged 88, three summers ago. Maybe her novels have long sat on your “to read” pile, or maybe you’re a lifelong fan looking to revisit your favorites. Either way, author Bernice McFadden, whose novel The Warmest December was praised by Morrison herself, can guide you through the work of this brilliant writer.
Photo: AP
The entry point:
Toni Morrison is perhaps best known for her 11 novels, but her short story Recitatif received renewed attention after it was published as a stand-alone volume earlier this year.
Originally published in 1983 in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Amiri Baraka, the 96-page tale tells the story of eight-year-old girls Twila and Roberta, one white and one black.
What’s brilliant about this story is that it’s about race, but Morrison never explicitly mentions it. We are never actually told which of the girls is white and which is black, we are left to intuit it through their behavior, actions and reactions.
Recitatif is a compact introduction to her trademark use of language and her layered, lyrical narrative style.
Morrison calls Recitatif an experiment. I call him a genius.
The book club’s choice
Many of Morrison’s novels have been called difficult and dense. I believe the truth is that critics and the reading public have labeled them as such because Morrison is such a master at juggling several literary techniques at once while rarely dropping the metaphorical ball.
Sula, perhaps the least convoluted in Morrison’s catalog, is the perfect novel to win over anyone who might have struggled with her work before. It’s a complex but extremely compelling look at two friends, Sula and Nell. They’re both such intriguing, fully realized characters that it’s hard not to fall in love with them. And while it might be seen as an “easier” read than, say, Beloved, don’t be fooled into thinking that Sulla lacks the complexity, layers, and lush language found in Morrison’s other books— there’s a lot about groups of friends to discuss and remove here.
The most current
The HBO series Watchmen turned the spotlight on the Tulsa race massacre in 1921, when angry white mobs destroyed Greenwood, an urban neighborhood so prosperous it was dubbed Black Wall Street. Bombs were dropped on homes and businesses and innocent black people were gunned down in the streets like rabid dogs.
But decades before Watchmen, Toni Morrison wrote Paradise, the third novel in a “trilogy” that also includes Beloved and Jazz. The novel is set in the fictional town of Ruby, Oklahoma; a town that, like Greenwood, was founded by formerly enslaved black people. Here, the threat to the conservative community is a group of women who have settled in a convent on the edge of town.
Eager to protect their heritage and way of life, nine male leaders set out to rid the city of the independent-minded, misfit female menace.
Published in 1998, Paradise was Morrison’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, and it was well worth the wait.
As was her custom, Morrison paid modest homage to her characters’ heritage. In Paradise, she takes the reader all the way back to Ruby’s founding in 1891 and gently transports us into the present day setting of 1972 – creating a story that is strong, fully realized and realistic.
And Paradise, among other things, has one of the best first lines of any of Morrison’s novels: “They shoot the white girl first. They can take their time with the rest.”
As with Recitatif, Morrison never reveals who the white girl in the story is. And that unanswered question remains a hotly debated topic — Morrison herself said that while many readers over the years have offered guesses, “only one of them has been right.”
The one that deserves more attention
Set in the 1680s, when slavery was still in its infancy, Mercy, Morrison’s ninth novel, focuses on Florence, a young, literate slave who is sold to pay a debt. Florence is devastated by the separation from her mother and in her new life tries again and again to heal the open and painful wound.
Although less widely read than Beloved, Mercy has much in common with Morrison’s best-known book. Here again, the writer examines the complex and often mystical bonds that exist between mother and daughter. This is a truly brilliant story that should be much better known.
If you’re reading one, it must be
In Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is a little black girl “who wanted to rise from the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.”
This searing and haunting story explores many things, but most of all it speaks to the oppression, subjugation and sexual violence perpetrated against black women.
The story is set in Depression-era America, but the storyline and themes of incest, colorism, and self-loathing would ring true in any period. The novel is a unique work of literature because it is both timeless and current.
Physical and emotional horrors… Oprah Winfrey in the 1993 film adaptation of Beloved. Photo: Maximum Film/Alamy
The classic one
Many have come to know Morrison’s voice and distinctive style through her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning novel, Beloved.
In it, the protagonist Sete escapes the shackles of slavery with her children. Seth’s former enslaver pursues her, and when she spots him coming down the road to her home, she sets out to kill her children to keep them from being enslaved again.
Only one child – Beloved – dies from her injuries. Years later, she returns as a ghost, haunting Sethe to the point of madness.
The novel is a metaphor and psychic manifestation of the physical, mental, and emotional horrors endured by enslaved people.
More than one of Morrison’s books can be described as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it.
This Bitter Earth by Bernice McFadden is published by Vintage (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.
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