Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison

Kelly Reames is Associate Professor of English at Western Kentucky Unviersity, USA.Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She was the 2011 recipient of the Hubbell Medal for lifetime service in American literature (sponsored by the MLA), and has received the Guggenheim fellowship, the senior National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, the Bunting Institute fellowship, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Philosophical Association and others. She has published more than fifty-five books of criticism, some edited, including Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and “Favored Strangers”: Gertrude Stein and Her Family (1995), as well as studies of Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. Recent books are A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present (2013) and Toni Morrison and the Maternal (2014).

• List of IllustrationsContributorsForeword “Toni Morrison: A Friend of My Mind,” Deborah E. McDowellAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Kelly L. Reames and Linda Wagner-MartinPart One: Morrison’s Novels1. “The Sight and Sound of Intersectionality in The Bluest Eye” Corinne Bancroft2. “Re-Visiting the Unspeakable: Can Soaphead Church Be Redeemed?”Trudier Harris3. “Do You Believe in Magic? #BlackGirlMagic in The Bluest Eye”James A. Crank4. “‘Is? My Baby? Burning?’: Segregation, Soldiers, and Civil Rights in Toni Morrison’s Sula”Thomas Fahy5. “Toni Morrison’s Female Epistemology: Post-nationalism, Diaspora, and Postcolonial Futures in Tar Baby, Mouth Full of Blood, and Paradise”Justine Baillie6. “‘How Can I Say Things That Are Pictures?’ Foregrounding in Beloved”Jennifer Larson7. “Rootlessness: Afro-Pessimism as Foundation in Paradise”Keith Clark8. “Love: Toni Morrison’s African American Gothic”Jameela F. Dallis9. “’A Home for the Heart’: Rootlessness, Richard Wright, and Morrison’s Home,” Leslie Elaine Frost10. “The Ancestor, Passing, and Imagination in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child”Janine Bradbury11. “Arcs of Transcendence: The Religious Imagination of Toni Morrison”Gurleen GrewalPart Two: Morrison and the Contemporary World12. “’Unforgetting’: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice”Kristina K. Groover13. “Blues Lives Matter: Reading Jazz in the Era of George Floyd”Andrew Scheiber14. “Margaret Garner in History, Opera, and as Inspiration for Beloved”Kristine Yohe15. “Faulkner after Morrison”David H. Krause16. “Prospects for the Public Uses of ‘Toni Morrison’”Kirk Curnutt17. “Going to Ground in Home: Morrison’s Mid-Century Political Modernism”Thadious M. Davis18. “’Only white folks got the freedom to hate home’: Strategic Empathy and Expanded Intersectionality since Morrison’s Home”Marijana Mikic and Derek C. MausPart Three: Morrison Teaching, Teaching Morrison19. “Toni Morrison and the Politics of Literary Generosity” Michael Nowlin20. “Soldiers, Identity, and Trauma: Teaching Home in a War Literature Course”Jennifer Haytock21. “Cotton Mather’s Witches and Toni Morrison’s Paradise”Janie Hinds22. “’What are you without racism?’: Toni Morrison on Perfectionism and White Supremacy”Christopher S. Lewis23. “Teaching Morrison’s Sula in the Post-Racial Moment”Marc Dudley24. “’Understanding All Too Well What is Meant’: Teaching Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif’”Catherine Seltzer25. “Toni Morrison’s Home: One Scene, Four Takes”Trudier HarrisBibliographyIndexIllustrations12.1 National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, 2020Photo: Kristina K. Groover12.2 National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama, 2020Photo: Kristina K. Groover

This rich cornucopia of insights and analysis by some of our most important scholars of American literature belongs on the bookshelf of everyone interested in the work of America’s greatest novelist and social commentator, Toni Morrison.