Spring 2015 : African American Studies 153C Novels of Toni Morrison

We will closely read six of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s novels, as well as some of her public addresses, considering the works in relation to: Morrison’s interest in creating what she calls “village literature” and in writing literature that does “trope work” that intervenes in American representations of blackness and racial identity; her theorization of the politics of race, gender and sexuality in everyday social life; her contribution to the renaissance of black women’s writing (and African American literature in general) in the 1980s and 1990s; the techniques of magic realism; the influence of feminism and the Black Power/Black Arts Movement in her representational strategies.

Required Texts

Novels:

The Bluest Eye Sula Song of Solomon Tar Baby Beloved

Paradise

Lectures:

The Dancing Mind

“Nobel Lecture”

Recommended texts

Playing in the Dark

“Recitatif”