LITR 5731: Seminar in
American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake,
fall 2001
Student Research Project
Linda Higginbotham
Professor Craig White
Minority Literature 5731
December 4, 2001
Toni
Morrison and Historical Memory
Most of literature written by American
minority authors is pedagogic, not toward the dominant culture, but for the
minority cultures of which they are members. These authors realize that the
dominant culture has misrepresented minority history, and it is the minority
writers' burden to undertake the challenge of setting the record straight to
strengthen and heal their own cultures. Unfortunately, many minorities are
ambivalent because they vacillate between assimilation (thereby losing their
separateness and cultural uniqueness) and segregation from the dominant culture.
To decide whether to assimilate, it is essential for minorities to understand
themselves as individuals and as a race. Mainstream United States history has
dealt with the past of the dominant culture forgetting about equally important
minority history. We cannot convey true American history without including and
understanding minority cultures in the United States, but minority history has
to first be written. National amnesia of minority history cannot be tolerated.
Toni Morrison is a minority writer has risen to the challenge of preventing
national amnesia through educating African-Americans by remembering their past
and rewriting their history. In her trilogy, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise,
and in her other works, Morrison has succeeded in creating literature for
African-Americans that enables them to remember their history from slavery to
the present.
Toni Morrison has been called America's
national author and is often compared with great dominant culture authors such
as William Faulkner. Morrison's fiction is valued not only for its
entertainment, but through her works, she has presented African-Americans a
literature in which their own heritage and history are truthfully disclosed.
However, Morrison does not record factual history instead her narratives relate
the psychological reasons for which African-Americans react to historical events
and personal situations. Morrison spent her childhood in a predominately
African-American town in Ohio where she was surrounded by people who accepted
her. Justine Tally writes that Morrison's belief "that black people were
morally superior to whites no doubt provided the foundation as well as the
background for the stories she was to weave as an adult." Morrison
"chose from the very beginning to challenge novelistic paradigms by writing
unapologetically from a gendered, African American perspective." (Tally 9).
The themes in her trilogy concern the relationship of history, memory and story.
Morrison queries that since the dominant
culture does not always understand African-Americans how can they write about
them (Morrison Playing 7)? "My early assumptions as a reader were
that black people signified little or nothing in the imagination of white
Americans" (15). She also believes that the dominant culture "sees
what he is socialized to see" (Tally 11). However, she has enjoyed
"reading and charting the emergence of an Africanist persona in the
development of a national literature as both a fascinating project and an urgent
one, if the history and criticism of our literature is to become accurate"
(Morrison Playing 48). An example of discrepancy in African-American
history, as related by dominant culture literature, is the portrayal of slaves
as faithful servants to loving masters. When, in fact, the truths of slavery
were too horrific for the dominant culture to relate or admit existed. Morrison
believes that it requires an African-American to communicate the experiences of
slaves. When the dominant culture attempts to describe slavery, "[w]hat did
happen frequently was an effort to talk about these matters with a vocabulary
designated to disguise the subject....Silence from and about the subject was the
order of the day" (50). The dominant culture's control of black history
greatly bothered Morrison; therefore, she proceeded to remedy the situation
through her writing.
Morrison has no concern for teaching the
dominant culture. She is writing for African-Americans to strengthen and heal
them as a culture. Morrison's writing compares with other ethnic writers because
it:
[A]llows for a
narrative exploration of the past that rejects or circumvents positivistic
assumptions about truth and history. This interest in the past is integral to
the ways in which alternative cultures oppose and subvert the dominant culture
that has historically both repressed and assimilated them" (Singh 18).
Morrison's fiction is based upon actual
historical events; however, she goes much further by utilizing the concept of
rememory that she values. Morrison has developed and written about different
types of memory in her novels including rememory, disrememory and social or
collective memory.
Social memory is an expression of collective
memories and experiences of individuals who are members of larger groups
(families, neighborhoods, communities and cultures). This collective memory is a
source of historical knowledge which provides a cultural group with
"material for conscious reflection." (Fentress, 26). Through social
memory, groups are identified as having a common history. Collective memories
are considered true memories because as a group they present multiple witnesses
of a single past. Social memory can be documented, but sometimes there is no
written source. However, the significance of social memory lies in the fact that
the members of the group believe the memory to be true. Oftentimes, an
individual's memory can become hazy over time; however, the combination of
several similar memories of an event becomes truth. Moreover, the customs,
morals and rights of a community are usually held in the community's collective
memories (9).
Through her stories, Morrison provides a
manageable method for remembering. In Social Memory, the authors refer to
stories as:
[N]atural
containers for memory, a way of sequencing a set of images, through logical and
semantic connection, into a shape which is, itself, easy to retain in
memory....Stories do more than represent particular events in a general fashion.
Stories provide us with a set of stock explanations which underlie our
predispositions to interpret reality in the ways that we do (50).
Morrison's narratives provide natural
containers of memories about slavery and its aftermath of surviving in the white
man's world. Furthermore, Morrison's characters' individual memories become
inseparable from collective memory. As Sethe, Paul D, Baby Suggs and the rest
share their memories with one another and with the reader, their memories
encompass the collective memory of all slaves. Sharon Jesse states that
"Beloved stands for all the ancestors lost in the Diaspora, demanding
restoration to a temporal continuum in which 'present' time encompasses much of
the immediate past, including several generations of the dead" (Jessee
199). In Jazz, the story of Dorcas' murder is repeatedly told from
different perspectives. Each person remembers the story, and collectively, the
characters form a collective memory which is recorded (Tally 35). In addition,
Morrison weaves the individual memories of Ruby's citizens into the collective
history of the town.
Morrison utilizes memories of tragic and
self-destructing events to capture her audience's attention as well as to enable
them to experience and feel the personal and universal pain of her characters.
In Beloved, Sethe loves her children, but her hatred of slavery is no
intense that she is willing to kill her children to prevent them from returning
to slavery. Beloved is so powerfully written that Morrison makes it
possible for the reader to understand Sethe instead of condemning her. When
Sethe saw Schoolteacher, she did not hesitate as she:
Collected every bit
of life she had made, all the parts of her that was precious and fine and
beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away, over
there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Out of this place, where they
would be safe...."I stopped him," she said.... "I took and put my
babies where they'd be safe (Morrison Beloved 163-164).
In addition, according to Sharon Jesse,
"Morrison is deliberately disorienting the reader, whom she wants to feel
what it is like to be 'snatched' just as the slaves were from one place to
another, from any place to another, without preparation and without
defense" (Jessee 203). In Jazz, a young girl is senselessly murdered
because she does not return an older man's love. Morrison, does not convey to us
the reason for the murder until late in the novel as the suspense builds and the
reader's understanding and sympathy increases for the characters. Moreover, Paradise
opens with the men of Ruby barging into the convent intent on murdering the
women. The only reason for the massacre is because these men feel threatened by
the strong women who are living without men and who they erroneously believe are
influencing and corrupting their youth.
Morrison thoroughly embraces the concept of
"rememory" in Beloved, and through Sethe, Morrison explains the
meaning of rememory. Sethe believes that times and places of the past are not
forgotten but still exist in our present, and when the memory escapes into our
conscious thoughts, it then becomes a rememory. Sethe relates to Denver:
I was talking about
time. It's so hard to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just
stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget.
Other things you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a
house burns down, it's gone, but the place--the picture of it--stays, and not
just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture
floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it,
even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there.
Right in the place where it happened.
"Can other people see it?" asked
Denver.
"Oh yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes."
(Morrison Beloved 35-36)
Furthermore, Morrison believes that society
cannot forget what it does not remember. Morrison refers to stories that have
been forgotten as "disremembered" (Reyes 180). She uses the 1918 flu
epidemic that killed more Americans than all the wars of the Twentieth Century
as an example of disrememory (Tally 19). The epidemic occurred, however,
Americans chose to "disremember" this event since it is not included
in most history books. Beloved was written so that women such as Margaret
Garner (the real Sethe) are not disremembered. Garner's story, as conveyed
through Sethe, reinstates the memories of other slaves and the horrific trials
and tribulations they had to endure. Morrison also disremembers the horrors of
the Middle Passage from falling into national amnesia through Beloved's dream
sequence in which she remembers a slave ship voyage from Africa. Morrison wrote Beloved,
as her dedication of the book indicates, to "Sixty Million and more"
(Morrison Beloved 1). Through her characters, Morrison also gives a voice
to the disremembered. If Morrison had not chosen the picture of the girl in the
coffin as the basis of Jazz, this woman would have been disremembered,
although the residue of her story probably would still exist in her family's
memory. The stories of all-black towns established in the Midwest are not
represented in history books; however, these towns have been forgotten until
Morrison used Ruby as a means to save them from being disremembered.
Morrison also conveys collective memories of
traumatic African-American children's experiences through individual characters.
Throughout her trilogy, many of Morrison characters had traumatic childhoods,
and Morrison succeeds in giving a voice to those who have been so traumatized
that they cannot tell their own stories. Abuse and loss during childhood cannot
be swept under the carpet but has to be remembered and dealt with just as social
and historical trauma. Oftentimes, the main characters in Morrison's works are
orphans or had dysfunctional families separated by slavery or the mental
disabilities caused by past traumas and discriminations. In Song of Solomon, the
Dead family is dysfunctional. Ruth Dead has a destructive relationship with her
son Milkman because she breastfeeds him much longer than is acceptable thereby
creating for Milkman a youth of ridicule and embarrassment. Also, Milkman
becomes too dependent and lazy to leave his parents to start of life of his own.
In addition, Macon, Sr. and Ruth hinder and ruin their daughters' lives by
keeping them secluded from the realities of society by placing them on a false
pedestal. Loss of parents is rampant in Jazz. Violet loses her mother to
suicide. Dorcas' parents were killed together in a fire, and she is raised by
her aunt. Joe's mother, Wild, is crazy and immediately rejects her son upon his
birth. Golden Gray is traumatized when he is informed as an adult man that his
father is black. Moreover, the women who live in the convent in Paradise
are required to remember the source of their pain in order to heal. Down in the
basement with Connie's help, each of the women are finally able to voice their
stories. Pallas is able to overcome her mother's betrayal, Mavis learns to deal
with the careless deaths of her twins, and Seneca is able to find her voice
which was repressed as she was constantly moved between foster homes.
Many African-American families have gone
through trauma, and according to Morrison, it is important to remember the
trauma to start the healing process. Antze states in Tense Past that
memory is "invoked to heal, blame, to legitimate. It has become a major
idiom in the construction of identity, both individual and collective, and a
site of struggle as well as identification" (Antze vii). Refusal of the
world to "bear witness" or simply forgetting traumatic events,
prevents closure. Antze suggests that "[w]hile the sufferers may not be
conscious of the memories, the point is that they have not been lost" (xix).
Although most African-Americans are not personally suffering from the actual
effects of slavery, many of them may be suffering from residual effects on their
culture. In other words, if they need historical information about slavery, it
is there for them because of authors such as Morrison. Moreover,
African-Americans have not forgotten the trauma of slavery as they are still
attempting to have the dominant culture pay for its crime of slavery through
monetary compensation.
When a minority culture represses their
history or personal experiences, it only harms them and holds them back. Until
the arrival of Paul D, Sethe is afraid of remembering, and Paul D keeps his
memories in a "tin box" next to where his heart used to be. As long as
their memories are repressed, their lives become depressed and stagnate. Sethe
goes about her daily routine with no happiness while Paul D roams from town to
town keeping people and his memories at a manageable arms-length. The arrival of
Paul D allows Sethe to open herself up to her painful memories which leaves the
door open for Beloved's appearance. Beloved haunts Sethe because she is afraid
that Sethe has disremembered her. Sethe can now "[t]rust things and
remember things because the last of the Sweet Home men was there to catch her if
she sank?" (Morrison Beloved 30). Sethe cannot wholeheartedly love
Paul D or Denver until she comes to terms and forgives herself for the past. In
addition, Sethe wants to know what happened to her husband, Halle, but she
wonders "if she could just manage the news" (36). When Sethe
eventually recognizes Beloved as her crawling already baby, she says, "now
I can look at things again because she's here to see them too" (18).
Perhaps the reason that Joe and Violet in Jazz stay together is that
Violet does not repress her husband's murder of Dorcas but actively seeks to
understand. All of the citizens of Ruby repress memories. When a person goes
against the rules of the town, such as marrying outside of the 8-rock families,
he or she is no longer a citizen of the town. Their families erase their names
from the family Bible, and they are treated as if they never existed. Instead of
looking to themselves to blame for problems that are developing with their own
children, the Ruby men go outside their world to the convent (which represents
the dominant culture) to place blame.
Morrison believes that the dead are always
present and influence the lives of the living as traditional West African
religions revere and remember their ancestors as an essential part of their
ritual. The dead are still considered to be a part of the living for several
generations called "sasa," and dead ones can appear in visual form to
his or her relatives. (Jessee 200). Sethe's own mother stressed to her to
remember the brand on her breast so that when she died Sethe would recognize her
body and remember her in death (Morrison Beloved 172). According to
Sharon Jessee, "to be forgotten at the time of death and afterward is to
have one's 'personal immortality" destroyed: the recently deceased are
'living dead'" (Jessee 201). This is the reason that Beloved seeks out
Sethe; she does not want to be forgotten.
Morrison's sources for her trilogy come from
physical documentation. Beloved arose from a newspaper photograph of a
former slave, Margaret Garner, who tried to kill her children instead of
returning them to slavery. Jazz was developed from a picture of a young,
beautiful woman in her coffin who refused to get medical treatment so that her
lover who shot her would not be identified and could escape. Paradise is
based on an advertisement for all-black towns developing in the Midwest:
"Come Prepared or Not At All." Unfortunately, the advertisement also
stated that people coming to new all-black towns had to have enough resources
for two years. Just like in Paradise, 200 freedmen and their families
were turned away from a town near Fort Smith because they did not have financial
resources (Tally 15-16). In addition, Paradise was also based on a
Brazilian story Morrison had heard of a convent of black nuns who took in
abandoned children and practiced candomble (African-Brazilian religion) who were
murdered by a group of men. Although she found out later the story was not true,
it was irrelevant because it related to the obsession of institutionalized
religion that she needed for Paradise (16-17).
While Morrison's works are based on actual
historical events, these events remain in the background of her novels.
Morrison's novels are set during major wars and social movements. Beloved
is the embodiment of the past as its setting begins in the 1870s. Morrison does
not mention the Civil War; however, the reader knows that the war and the
problems of its aftermath loom on the horizon. Moreover, Morrison does not
directly address the Middle Passage but has Beloved, through a dream, remember
the horrors that Africans faced at the hands of the slavetraders and then their
masters. Although The Bluest Eye is set before the Civil Rights Movement,
the entire novel relates to reasons why the Civil Rights Movement was essential.
The children in The Bluest Eye desire to be a part of the dominant
culture. They do not understand that they are beautiful in their own right.
Morrison alleviates the false notion that the dominant culture is superior. She
teaches that "black is beautiful," which African-American children
will probably never learn from the dominant culture. The migration of
African-Americans from the rural South to escape the slavery of tenant farming
to northern cities, the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression form the
background setting for Jazz. Morrison writes, "The wave of black
people running from want and violence crested in the 1870s; the '80s; the '90s
but was a steady stream in 1906 when Joe and Violet joined it" (Morrison Jazz
33). It is 1926 and World War I is over. All cultures rejoice together that
"there will never be another one" and "at last, at last,
everything's ahead....History is over, you all, and everything's ahead at last.
Everyone is planning for the future" (7). The East St. Louis riots by
"disgruntled veterans of all-colored units who come home to white
violence" or were they instigated by "whites terrified by the wave of
southern Negroes flooding the towns, searching for work and places to live"
were made personal as Alice's sister and brother-in-law are killed during the
riots (57). Paradise covers Post-Reconstruction, Post-World War I,
Post-Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and the 1990s. From Morrison's
trilogy one gleans that after each war African-Americans thought they were on
the road to equality with the dominant culture; however, the dominant culture
forgot their sacrifices. Although the Civil War freed the slaves, the government
refused to grant the same civil liberties to the freed slaves as the dominant
culture received. Morrison also remembers that the dominant culture is still
suppressing African-Americans even though they sacrificed as much as white
America did during World War I. After fighting courageously in World War II and
being accepted on equal terms by the Europeans, blacks assumed they would have
full citizenship in the United States when they return, but they did not. Again,
in the Vietnam War, blacks were placed on the front lines where 60% of the men
killed were blacks, but the ones that came home still had to fight
discrimination by the dominant culture (Tally 26). These African-American men
were cheated, and Morrison remembered.
Morrison's works are important because she
undertakes the difficult task of describing how memories of historical events
affect people. Most historians painstakingly search to ensure that a historical
event has actually occurred. However, if they attempt to ascertain the reasons
behind an event, they are "content with the merest appearance" (Fentress
vii). Moreover, the authors of Memory, Narrative & Identity believe
that "[e]thnic writers...have often employed their storytelling to redefine
history and culture and to legitimize personal and collective memory"
(Singh 18). Through the use of "myths, rituals, dreams and legends" or
"subversive strategies," Morrison is able to tell the true story .
Morrison states that the dialogue in Beloved is the silence of four
hundred years. It leaps out of the novel's void and out of the void of
historical discourse on slave parent-child relationships and pain as Morrison
remembers (18).
Besides actual historical events, Morrison
writes in general about the prejudices and personal discriminations that are not
included in the dominant culture's history books. Jazz is inundated with
prejudices that the dominant culture committed against African-Americans. For
example, in Virginia, there are no "high schools in her [Violet's] district
a colored girl could attend, and she mentions the "first class of colored
nurses" at Bellevue (Morrison Jazz 6). Referring to the City,
Morrison writes, "Nobody says it's pretty here; nobody says it's easy
either. What it is is decisive, and if you pay attention to the street plan, all
laid out, the City can't hurt you" (8). In other words, as long as
African-Americans stayed in Harlem or the segregated black portion of the City,
they were safe. Morrison also mentions that "underneath the good times and
the easy money something evil ran the streets and nothing was safe" (9).
When Joe and Violet travel to the City, they are forced to move five times on
the train because of the Jim Crow law (127). Morrison also remembers the
humiliation of African-Americans not being accepted by members of their own race
because of the shade of their dark skin. When Joe and Violet changed residences
in the City "it was the light-skinned renters who tried to keep us
out" (127). Ironically, however, "landlords black and white fought
over colored people for the high rents" they charged and blacks had no
choice but to pay (Morrison Jazz 127).
Paradise is
similar to Jazz because the freed slaves that were searching for a home
were shocked when they were discriminated against by other African-American
towns because either they did not have financial means or their skin was too
black:
"...[F]or ten
generations they had believed the division they fought to close was free against
slave and rich against poor. Usually, but not always, white against black. Now
they saw a new separation: light-skinned against black. Oh, they knew there was
a difference in the minds of whites, but it had not struck them before that it
was of consequence, serious consequence, to Negroes themselves. Serious enough
that their daughters would be shunned as brides; their sons chosen last; that
colored men would be embarrassed to be seen socially with their sisters. The
sign of racial purity they had taken for granted had become a stain. The
scattering that alarmed Zechariah because he believed it would deplete them was
now an even more dangerous level of evil, for if they broke apart and were
devalued by the impure, then, certain as death, those ten generations would
disturb their children's peace throughout eternity" (Morrison Paradise
194).
Morrison was "...interested in what on
earth that must have felt like to have come all that way and look at some other
Black people who said you couldn't come in" (Tally 16). Once the town of
Ruby is established, there are no discriminations enacted against the
African-Americans of the town. However, Ruby discriminates against the dominant
culture by refusing to allow them access to their community.
Minority cultures are often ambivalent about
their history because they dread remembering painful and traumatic social and
individual memories. At times, it is almost more than they can bear. For example
Sethe and Paul D need to gradually remember the past (Jessee 203). Everyday
since Sethe escaped Sweet Home she begins the "day's serious work of
beating back the past" (Morrison Beloved 42). Moreover, Morrison
reveals the ambivalence of African-Americans to assimilate into the dominant
culture or to attempt to keep African-American culture separate. The youth of
Ruby want to break loose from the confinement of their parents while the parents
want to maintain the status quo. The story of Coffee and Tea in Paradise conveys
ambivalence. Tea accommodates the white men (holding guns) by dancing for
them. On the other hand, Coffee is shot in the foot for refusing to dance. Tally
believes this represents the split in the 1960s within the Black Power movement
and their definition of "blackness" and whether they should assimilate
into the dominant culture or keep their own heritage (Tally 23-25).
It appears that Morrison does not want
African-Americans to totally assimilate into the dominant culture. She states
that if African-Americans assimilate there would be a vacuum because black
society would lose their roots resulting in a weak foundation. Moreover,
although blacks were integrated into the dominant culture, there would still be
prejudice and discrimination, then who could the minority culture depend on?
They would not have their own culture rich in its history and memory to support
them. Since the majority of Morrison's works are set before the Civil Rights
Movement, African-Americans were forcefully segregated from the dominant
culture. However, Paradise takes place in the 1990s, when the people of
Ruby had a choice of whether to join the dominant culture or continue their
isolation from the real world. Moreover, in Paradise, Morrison proves
that it is impossible to escape the influences of the dominant culture. She
states that "[t]he overwhelming question for me...was how does it happens
that people who have a very rich, survivalist, flourishing revolutionary
impetus, end up either like their oppressor, or self-destructive in a way that
represents the very thing they were running from...?" (Tally 16) In Paradise,
the parents try to protect the children from the dominant culture. They did not
have a motel or restaurant in town so strangers would not be tempted to stop.
However, they had televisions and radios and cars to travel to other towns. The
younger generations did not want to be tied to the past; therefore, they
rebelled against their parents. For this reason, after World War II the 8-rock
citizens of Haven moved farther west and established the town of Ruby to insure
that the dominant culture did not invade their society. Unfortunately, utopias
can only exist outside history, you have to be able to control history and as
the citizens of Haven and Ruby discovered, that is impossible (19). When the men
of Ruby decide to ambush the convent women, Ruby is changed forever and is
forced to open its doors to the outside world. Reverend Misner describes the
reason Ruby would eventually assimilate:
Born out of an old
hatred, one that began when one kind of black man scorned another kind and that
kind took the hatred to another level, their selfishness had trashed two hundred
years of suffering and triumph in a moment of such pomposity and error and
callousness it froze the mind. Unbridled by Scripture, deafened by the roar of
its own history, Ruby, it seemed to him, was an unnecessary failure. How
exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human
imagination became trying to achieve it. Soon Ruby will be like any other
country town: the young thinking of elsewhere; the old full of regret. The
sermons will be eloquent but fewer and fewer will pay attention or connect them
to everyday life. How can they hold it together, he wondered, this hard-won
heaven defined only by the absence of the unsaved, the unworthy and the strange?
Who will protect them from their leaders? (Morrison Paradise 306).
The irony is that in trying to keep Ruby
racially pure, they were imitating the dominant culture (Tally 25).
A perusal of criticism on minority writers
reveals that they truly write to remember. After reading Morrison's trilogy,
"readers are enabled to remember things that culture has asked them to
forget" (Singh vii). In addition, after studying the works of Toni Morrison
and her views on memory, minority cultures do not seem to want to totally
assimilate into the dominant culture; they desire to be accepted as a separate
entity. However, minority cultures expect to be given the same rights and
privileges as the dominant culture. Minorities want to live in peace within the
dominant culture without prejudice while still keeping their own traditions and
beliefs alive. In a perfect world, this would be the ideal. As Morrison revealed
in Paradise, establishment of a utopia outside of the dominant culture is
not the answer because, eventually, the dominant culture will invade. It is
important for the dominant culture to read minority authors such as Toni
Morrison to understand the true culture and history of minority groups. It is
also vitally important for minority writers to communicate social and individual
memories so that as a culture African-Americans can continue to heal from the
traumas and discriminations imposed on them by the dominant culture. Toni
Morrison has faithfully remembered and recorded African-American history.
WORKS CITED
Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek. Tense
Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory. Introduction. New
York: Routledge, 1996 (vii-xxxviii).
Fentress, James and Chris Wickham. Social
Memory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
1992.
Jessee, Sharon. Memory, Narrative, and
Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American
Literatures. Time and the Marvelous in Beloved. Boston:
Northeastern University
Press, 1994, 198-211.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York:
Penguin Books USA, Inc. 1987.
Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye.
Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1970.
Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York:
Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1992.
Morrison, Toni. Paradise. New York:
Penguin Putnam, Inc. 1997.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark:
Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1992.
Morrison, Toni, Song of Solomon. New
York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1977.
Reyes, Angelita. Memory, Narrative, and
Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American
Literatures. Carnival as an Archaeological Site for Memory.
Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1994, 179-197.
Singh, Amritjit, Joseph T. Skerretk Jr., and
Robert e. Hogan. Memory, Narrative, and
Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures. Introduction.
Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1994.
Tally, Justine. Paradise Reconsidered Toni
Morrison's (Hi)stories and Truths. Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1999.