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=Toni Morrison by Kelly Mayo=

Toni Morrison is one of the most influential authors of the twentieth century. Her views on African American culture and behavior contain more depth and emotion than those of any other scholar. Her novels attempt to tell the reader that black people are just the same as any other race of people in terms of behavior and overall, basic humanity. Her work is so intense and dimensional, "you can spend hours arguing...about what you just read" (David 82). Morrison tries to accomplish tolerance for African Americans through her novels.

Morrison's first novel, __The Bluest Eye__, tells a story about a girl who feel like nothing short of an outsider. She is ignored by her mother and sexually abused by her father, and prays for blue eyes because she believes that they will make her beautiful and accepted by everyone. The novel deals with isolation and self-esteem, which are things that every child and adolescent struggles with at some point in their lives. Also at play here is the yearning for love and acceptance. The true meaning of beauty is questioned and the effects of lost innocence are explored. Extreme circumstances and horrible family dynamics aside, __The Bluest Eye__ is ultimately a tale of a young girl's struggle with her identity that any girl in the world can relate to.

__Beloved__, Toni Morrison's most famous, Pulitzer-winning novel, is about a woman haunted by the memory of her dead baby, who is personified as a ghost who lives in a house with her mother. Many spiritual and supernatural elements, such as resurrection, are present in this novel. Flashbacks are commonly used to explain the events in the novel and their significance. At its core, however, are the basic human elements of strength, survival, love, and hope. This is a story of the lasting bond between a mother and her child, of overcoming obstacles, and of making peace with the past.

__Jazz__ tells the story of several people succeeding and failing in life during the 1920s, or Jazz Age. This novel can be compared to a history textbook, exploring the surface life and rebelliousness, as well as the emptiness and superficiality of this period of American history and how the characters refelect those traits in themselves. Flashbacks and flashforwards are used commonly. Love, hope, friendship, and forgiveness, or lack of it, are detailed. Obsession and its consequences are shown. Each character, like the time period that they live in, has two sides: one light and one dark. How each character deals with themselves and each other is what makes the novel interesting.

__Paradise__ is a novel about a simple Oklahoma town and the residents who live there. The story is set in the late 1960s, but flashbacks tell how the town was founded after the Civil War and how the current residents ended up there. There are many different characters with interlocking stories in this novel, but the climax focuses on the youth of the town, with their new ideas on life and religion, clashing with the older residents and their traditional views. This is a novel about humanity, plain and simple. Characters are strengthened by family, love, and dedication, and they are, at the same time, twisted by obsession, stubborness, temptation, hate, and racism. Part of the reason the town was built in the middle of nowhere was because the black men who founded it could not find acceptance anywhere else, so they built their own society. Also explored in the novel are religion, sexuality, the effects of social change, and what happens when one's views are followed too closely. __Paradise__ is the ultimate naturalistic novel about a group of people as lost and alone as the town they live in.

Toni Morrison wrote because she wanted to make it clear to everyone that African Americans are not so different from everybody else. All of her novels deal with conflicts, and not only between white people and black people. The lightness versus the darkness of life, love versus hate, and strength versus weakness are dug into deeply in all of Morrison's novels. Interestingly enough, there is also a good deal of black-on-black racism in all of Morrison's works. This drives home the message that basic African American life and behavior are exactly the same as the life and behavior of all other races; it is "a reality that we may not perceive as ours, though it could be ours" (Bloom 142). Morrsion's works reflect the post-civil rights era by showing the public more to the African American than what was seen in the marches and riots on television (__Beloved__, her first novel, was published in 1970, her latest, __Paradise__, in 1998). Toni Morrison's message to the world is to look through a black person's eyes, and see the similarities to one's own life.

Annotated Bibliography
Bloom, Harold. __Bloom's Major Novelists__. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House, 2000

__Bloom's Major Novelists__ is a well-written book on Toni Morrison edited by Harold Bloom. After the introduction and short biography on Morrison, the book is divided into four sections, with twenty-five different authors and professors digging deeply into Morrison's most famous novels: __Sula__, __The Bluest Eye__, __Song of Solomon__, and __Beloved__. Each section begins with a list of characters, a plot summary, and some critical views on the novel the section focuses on. Then the novel is analyzed and reflected upon by several contributors. I used this resource to supplement my Author Trading Card and to learn more about the overall message that Morriosn tries to convey to her readers.

Bloom, Harold. __Bloom's Reviews-Beoved__. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999

__Bloom's Reviews-Beloved__ contains a critical analysis of one of Toni Morrison's most famous novels by several different authors. It also contains an introduction by editor Harold Bloom. This book is very similar to __Bloom's Major Novelists__, but instead of several novels being critiqued at once, the focus is only on one. __Beloved__, the novel that won Morrison the Pulitzer Prize, is peeled open like an orange and observed from every angle in this book. Every aspect of it, from the characters and their accomplishments to the setting and social scene, is explained in a chapter-by-chapter analysis, and Morrison's hidden meanings and how they reflect real life are explained in several essays. I use information from this book to form my own opinions on __Beloved__ so I can discuss it on the wiki page. This book can feel monotonous at points, but it is very useful.

Bloom, Harold. __Toni Morrison__. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999

The book __Toni Morrison__ is an excellent resource on Morrison and her works. It contains reviews and opinions by many respected authors and scholars, and is edited by Harold Bloom, who also provides a well-written introduction to the book. Morrison's novels are carefully picked apart and analyzed thoroughly by these contributors, and their criticisms explain how Morrison's ideas on African American culture reflect the world at large. I used parts of these criticisms, as well as part of Bloom's introduction, to kick off my research and lay a foundation on who Morrison is. This book is intellectual and amazing, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to dig deeply into the mind of Toni Morrison.

Chalton, Nicola. "Toni Morrison." __Literary Lifelines__. 7th ed. 1998

__Literary Lifelines__ is an adequate resource on famous authors. Each author is designated two pages that just barely outline his or her biography, accomplishments, and famous works. There is a crude black and white illustraion on eac author, as well as a timeline of famous events that occured during his or her lifetime. I used this resource to locate the years that each of Toni Morrion's novels came out, but overall this was only a minimal resource.

David, Ron. __Toni Morrison Explained__. New York: Random House, 2000

__Toni Morrison Explained__ is a kinder, gentler response to Harold Bloom's jam-packed resource guides. Instead of focusing on Morrison's works and how they reflect the world at large, author Ron David focuses on Morrison herself, explaining who she was as a person, what she thought of the world that she lived in, and what inspired her to write the way that she did. This book contained a deeper biography than most books contain, which helped me considerably with my Author Trading Card and overall research. When her novels are discussed, the focus is on how Morrison was inspired to write them and he effect they had on her, not the effect they may have had on others. This book is wonderful, and I recommend it greatly.

McCarthy, Joanne. "Toni Morrison". __Magill's Choice: American Ethnic Writers__ (2000) 21 May 2008 http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct

The article "Toni Morrison" by Joanne McCarthy is a brief biography on the author's life and work. However, unlike other biographies on Morrison, this one not only contains her famous novels, but also the nonfiction books and children's stories she has written with her son, Slade, which were very interesting to discover. They will be a good addition to the wiki page, if I choose to critique any of them. This resource was organized and a quick read, which helped in a time crunch.

Wilkinson, Brenda, and Jim Haskins. __African American Women Writers__. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000

__African American Women Writers__ contains useful information on many different African American female writers from the Civil War through the twentieth century. Each author is designated several pages which outline her life, accomplishments, famous works, and the impact she made on the world. There are beautiful photographs of most of the authors, and some even added their own quotes outlining what inspired them to write and putting her life in her own words. I use this resource to understand the social scene that was in place during Toni Morrison's life and how that inspired her to write. This is a very straightforward book that I recommend to anyone looking for just the facts on an author.