A selective list of literary criticism for American novelist and 1993 Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, including signed articles by recognized scholars, peer and editor reviewed articles, and web sites that follow MLA guidelines for web pages.
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Androne, Helane Adams. Revised memories and colliding identities: absence and presence in Morrison's "Recitatif" and Viramontes's "Tears on My Pillow." Melus, June 2007.
Aguiar, Sarah Appleton. "'Passing on' death: stealing life in Toni Morrison's Paradise." African American Review, Fall, 2004. "With Paradise, Morrison demonstrates unequivocally that death is a necessary condition of and for life; that is, the acceptance of mortality is a critical aspect of life's and death's journeys."
Andrews, William L. and Nellie Y. McKay (eds.) A review of Toni Morrison's Beloved: A Casebook (Oxford UP, 1999). Reviewed in African American Review, Winter, 2000 by Malin Pereira. "Andrews and McKay offer in this volume scholarship on Beloved by some of the most respected and prominent critics today in African American and contemporary literature."
Chandler, Marilyn. A complete book-length critical study, Dwelling in the Text: Houses in American Fiction (Univ. of California Press, 1991). "What is a house? And what can architecture tell us about individual psychology, national character and aspiration? The house holds a central place in American mythology, as Marilyn Chandler demonstrates in a series of 'house tours' through American novels." Contains chapters on Thoreau's Walden; Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"; Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables; James's The Portrait of a Lady; Chopin's The Awakening; Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"; Wharton's The Age of Innocence; Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!; Postwar Suburban Fiction; Mary Robinson's Housekeeping; and Toni Morrison's Beloved. California Digital Library
Coonradt, Nicole M. "To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need-Bridges to Understanding in Toni Morrison's Beloved." In College Literature, Fall 2005. "Studying Amy Denver not as a minor character, but one of greater importance than heretofore accorded, this essay posits her as one of Morrison's "bridges" to deeper understanding in Beloved."
Duvall, John N. A review of John N. Duvall's The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and Postmodern Blackness (Palgrave, 2000). In Style, Spring, 2002 by Gary Storhoff "In perhaps one of the most important books on Morrison yet written, Duvall explores Morrison's 'struggle to fashion a useable identity.'"
Gauthier, Marni. "The other side of paradise: Toni Morrison's making of mythic history." On Paradise (1998). In African American Review, Fall, 2005
Grandt, Jurgen E. "Kinds of Blue: Toni Morrison, Hans Janowitz, and the Jazz Aesthetic." African American Review, Summer, 2004. Compares Toni Morrison's Jazz with a 1927 novel by Hans Janowitz also titled Jazz
Hogue, W Lawrence. Postmodernism, traditional cultural forms, and the African American narrative: Major's Reflex, Morrison's Jazz, and Reed's Mumbo Jumbo. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Spring 2002
Jesser, Nancy. "Violence, home, and community in Toni Morrison's Beloved." In African American Review, Summer, 1999. "Morrison, through a complex interweaving of peopled spaces, shows how homes and communities serve as places to gather strength, formulate strategy, and rest, even as they are insufficient to the task of "solving" institutional and social ills."
Jimoh, A Yemisi. An introduction to Toni Morrison from the Literary Encyclopedia, 25 October 2002. On The Bluest Eye (1970); Sula (1973); Jazz (1992); Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992); Paradise (1998)
Knadler, Stephen. "Domestic violence in the Harlem Renaissance: remaking the record in Nella Larsen's Passing and Toni Morrison's Jazz." In African American Review, Spring, 2004
Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl. New Visions of Community in Contemporary American Fiction: Tan, Kingsolver, Castillo, Morrison. [Michael, Magali Cornier. New visions of community in contemporary American fiction: Tan, Kingsolver, Castillo, Morrison; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism]. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 26, 2 (Fall 2007)
Morrison, Toni. Interview. "The nature of love: novelist Diane McKinney-Whetstone talks with Toni Morrison about her new novel, the literary scene and what comes next" in Essence, Oct, 2003 by Diane Mckinney-Whetstone
Read, Andrew. "'As if word magic had anything to do with the courage it took to be a man': black masculinity in Toni Morrison's Paradise."African American Review, Winter, 2005
Romero, Channette. "Creating the beloved community: religion, race, and nation in Toni Morrison's paradise," On her novel Paradise, in African American Review, Fall, 2005
Washington, Teresa N. "The mother-daughter Aje relationship in Toni Morrison's Beloved." "Toni Morrison has often expressed disappointment with critical analyses of her art..... My goal with this essay is to attempt to address Morrison's critical challenge by using an Africana theoretical perspective centered on a force called Aje to interpret the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship in Beloved." African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005
Weathers, Glenda B. "Biblical trees, biblical deliverance: literary landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison." In African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005
A NY Times web site on Toni Morrison includes six Times reviews of her books, from The Bluest Eye in 1979 to Paradise in 1998, and four articles and interviews.
Transcript of an interview with Toni Morrison by Elizabeth Farnsworth on the PBS Newshour, March 9, 1998
The Toni Morrison page at the Nobel Prize web site contains a brief biography and her 1993 Nobel Prize acceptance lecture
Very brief biography of Toni Morrison from the Black Collegian Online
An interview with Toni Morrison by Zia Jaffrey in Salon Magazine, Feb. 1998
Time Magazine article about Toni Morrison's work and life, October 18, 1993.
A short, light article on Toni Morrison from the Boston Globe newspaper
A Teacher's Guide to Toni Morrison, from textbook publisher Heath
An extensive secondary bibliography for Toni Morrison from the Bibliography Committee of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, briefly annotated
Web site for Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature: A scholarly journal devoted to the study of women's literature of all periods and nationalities [Feminist and Women's Studies]
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