Reading Notes W16: Morrison, Part A

Toni Morrison (1172-1187)

• Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio and took the saint's name Anthony, but later shortened it to Toni)
• she combines realistic depictions of African American experience with a strong sense of the past's hold on the present 
• she often conveys this sensitivity to the power of history by invoking magic or supernatural occurrences (1172)
• her family participated in the Great Migration of African Americans from the South in the early decades of the century
• she studied English at Howard University, where she was active in student theater
• her master's thesis, at Cornell University, examined the role of suicide in the fiction of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkneer
• her later fictional practice made use both of the subject of violent death and supernatural, drawing from oral tradition such as the ghost stories her family told her as a child, to create characters who can fly or talk to the dead (1173)
• Beloved treats a still earlier period of African American history, the time of slavery
• based on the true story of a runaway slave who killed her children in order to prevent the child's reenslavement 
• throughout her works, characters find themselves caught in patterns of violence and prejudice that threaten to destroy them
• "Recitatif" (1983), Morrison's only published short story, examines a friendship between two girls of different races
• the title refers to passages of narrative or dialogue in an opera that are sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech (1173)
• the story reveals the nature of their relationship
• the narrator, Twyla, meets Roberta at "St. Bonny's," the fictional St. Bonaventure Orphanage just outside NYC
• they are the only 2 girls there whose mothers are still alive, but neither mother is up to the task of caring for her daughter
• Twyla's childlike perspective presents on events at St. Bonny's and the maturation of her point of view as she grows up, has children, and looks back on half-forgotten events
• Twyla and Roberta have much in common but are separated by race
• Twyla never specifies her own race or that of Roberta
• Maggie, who works in the kitchen, is also ambiguous of race 
• "Recitatif" represents Morrison's effort to challenge such assumptions, writers have tended to assume a white audience and readers assume the characters are white
• although racial conflict in society affects the girls' relationship later in life, "Recitatif" envisions the possibility of transcending racial divisions and embracing a common humanity (1173)