NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 17: Toni Morrison performs at the Jazz At Lincoln Centers Concert For Hurricane Relief at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on September 17, 2005 in New York City. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images)
Top five reads from Toni Morrison
Here are our recommendations for the books and essays to read to honor the legacy of the Nobel-Prize-winning author, who passed away in New York City at the…
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- Beloved - It has been called the American novel of the twentieth century - and with good reason. Published in 1987, the novel, which portrays the tragic legacy of slavery that haunts a black family in Ohio in the post-Civil War era, has received countless awards over the years. But more than that, it articulates a deep truth of the United States which in most public and political spheres the country has proved itself incapable of addressing with truth and honesty.
- “Mourning for Whiteness” - This essay by Morrison, published in The New Yorker magazine in the wake of Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential elections, examines the veins of white supremacy which fed Trump’s support, and which have only been further exposed in the successive years of his presidency.
- God Help the Child - This is Morrison’s final novel that she published in her lifetime, in 2015. The first of her novels to be set in contemporary times, the story follows Bride, a woman who is forced to confront the childhood trauma she endured as a result of abuse and neglect of her lighter-skinned parents due to her dark skin.
- The Source of Self-Regard - This 2019 collection of essays, speeches, and other writings from Morrison is the last nonfiction collection that was published in her lifetime. Apart from her work as a novelist, Morrison had a long and distinguished career as a professor, lecturer, critic, editor, and academic; her nonfiction writings contain the same power, dimension, beauty and nuance as her fiction work.
- The Bluest Eye - Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye was published in 1970. She had written the novel in snatches of time, between raising two sons on her own and working at Random House publishing in Syracuse, NY. It is the story of a black girl who suffers poverty and sexual abuse in small-town Ohio, and who desperately wishes for blue eyes, a marker of whiteness, in order to be seen as beautiful.
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