Toni Morrison: Playing with DifferenceIn this innovative study, Lucille P. Fultz explores Toni Morrison's rich body of work, uncovering the interplay between differences - love and hate, masculinity and femininity, black and white, past and present, wealth and poverty - that lie at the heart of these vibrant and complex narratives. Much has already been made of Morrison's treatment of race, but Playing with Difference demonstrates that throughout her work Morrison creates a sophisticated matrix of difference, layering a multitude of other distinctions onto the racial one and observing how these potencies of difference play themselves out in her characters. Fultz's holistic, thematic approach to her subject enables her to move deftly among the novels and stories, building a nuanced understanding of how markers of difference influence Morrison's narrative decisions. She examines Morrison's facility with imagery and wordplay and discusses the ways in which Morrison contends with the expectations of gender and race that have stiffened into traditions - or worse, prejudices. novel, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to Paradise (1998), along with stories, such as Recitatif, as parts of an elaborate and dynamic whole. Lucille P. Fultz, an associate professor of English at Rice University, has been an NEH fellow, a Mellon fellow, and the recipient of a Ford Foundation grant. She is a coeditor of Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters and the author of essays on Toni Morrison that have appeared in several collections. |
Contents
The Other as Subject | 20 |
Narrating the Pain of Difference | 46 |
Figuring the Reader | 77 |
Reflections on the Ethics of Difference | 99 |
121 | |
135 | |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic African American African American literature Alice Alice's Amy and Sethe Amy's asks assertion Aunt Jimmy's Baby Suggs's behavior Beloved black community black women blood rule Bluest Eye body characters child Claudia construction context Convent women critical cultural desire discourse discussion father Felice Felice's female gaze gender Geraldine's girl Haven and Ruby Howard Johnson's human interpretation Iola Leroy issue Jadine Jadine's Jazz lives look Maggie male marriage Mary Jane candies maternal moral Morrison's fiction Morrison's narrative narrator narrator's never notion novel Oprah Winfrey Show pain Paradise Patricia's Pauline Pauline's Pecola perspective physical Pilate Pilate's play politics race racial identity racism reader Recitatif recognize relationship reminds response reveals scene Sethe's slave social Song of Solomon speaks story suffering suggests Sula Sula's Tar Baby tells things tion tive Toni Morrison Twyla and Roberta Twyla's mother understanding Valerian Violet voice Wendt woman writing