13 of the Best and Most Essential Toni Morrison Works

YOU ARE READING: 13 of the Best and Most Essential Toni Morrison Works AT PhebinhvanhocEN

although he left us more than two years ago, toni morrison and his unique work are still alive in our hearts and minds, undulating like concentric circles over unfathomable depths as he subverts and transforms myths of race and redemption, personal and political. One of 12 Americans to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Morrison was born on February 18, 1931, and grew up in Lorain, Ohio, earning degrees from Howard and Cornell. she then herself, as a divorced mother of two, she became the first black editor of random house, where she brought such luminaries as toni cade bambara, angela davis and gayl jones to print. however, her passion was writing and teaching; she traded the editor’s desk for the typewriter and a lectern in princeton. She mentored writers like David Treuer and Mohsin Hamid; By all accounts, her finger went straight to the pulse of a shop piece, unerring in her aim, precise in her criticism.

but we know her today as she asked us to know her: through her novels and a published story. On what would have been her 91st birthday, we toast to 13 of her groundbreaking books, 13 ways Toni Morrison stared at the world, its beauty, cruelty, and wonder, and once again immerse ourselves in her rich narratives and his touching language.

You are reading: Best toni morrison books

the bluest eye (1970)

This debut novel follows a young black woman named Pecola who grows up in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio, in the years following the Great Depression. She constantly teases Pecola about her dark skin, hair, and eyes, causing her to yearn for white features that she perceives as more beautiful, such as blonde hair, light eyes, and light skin. But as the young woman prays for the miracle of her blue eyes, her personal life takes a heartbreaking turn. From racial conflict to sexual abuse to the inner demons of Ella’s characters, Morrison boldly heralds the themes that will fuel Ella’s long career, literary jet fuel.

sula (1973)

sula takes you through the lives and divergent paths of two best friends: nel and sula. one decides to stay in his hometown and raise a family, while the other leaves home to go to college and enjoy city life. They soon meet again, coming to terms with their differences and the consequences of their own life choices. morrison explores broader historical arcs and their imprint on all of us.

song of solomon (1977)

One of Morrison’s most celebrated works, a blend of realism, fable and fantasy, Solomon’s Song won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1978 and was chosen by Oprah’s Book Club in 1996. still life of dead macon, jr. (aka Milkman), from birth to adulthood, exploring the many mysteries and unforgettable characters that surround him and the brutality of racial violence. “Few Americans know and can say more than she does in this wise and spacious novel,” the New York Times’s Reynolds Price said of Morrison in a 1977 review.

tar baby (1981)

This romance depicts the unlikely love story of a young black couple from two different worlds: Jadine is a beautiful model accustomed to the life of the rich due to her family’s wealthy white employers; son is a poor fugitive. together, they seek a world where superficial differences do not pit people against each other. However, Morrison’s lighter record is misleading as it sifts through the layers of class struggle.

beloved (1987)

Winning the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, this novel is perhaps Morrison’s best-known. Based on the true story by Margaret Garner, Sethe, the protagonist of Beloved is a former slave who escapes to Ohio in the 1870s. Despite her freedom, she is haunted by the trauma of her past. In 1998, Oprah starred in the film adaptation. “Beloved is written in anti-minimalist prose that is at once rich, elegant, eccentric, gruff, lyrical, sinuous, colloquial, and very to the point,” wrote Margaret Atwood of The Handmaid’s Tale in a 1987 review for the New York times.

jazz (1992)

Set in 1920s Harlem, this historical story depicts the dramatic love triangle of door-to-door salesman Joe, his wife, Violet, and their teenage girlfriend, Dorcas. In a sudden turn of events, after Dorcas begins to resent and reject Joe, he kills the young woman. Subsequently, a timeline is put together that reveals the motivations and inner turmoil of the Morrison cast.

paradise (1997)

Elected to Oprah’s Book Club in 1998, Paradise concludes the beloved trilogy, chronicling the events leading up to a shocking act of violence in Ruby, an all-black, patriarchal Oklahoma City. Morrison’s intricate narrative structures reflect his insightful look at black history, a world-building tour de force grounded in reality and brimming with speculative optimism.

love (2003)

Focusing on a deceased hotel owner named Bill Cosey, who died under suspicious circumstances, Love unfolds as a divided narrative that follows the lives of many women who shared relationships with him. From his granddaughter to his widow, these women filled Cosey’s life with love and misery. As with Beloved, Morrison illuminates the many ways the dead hold the living in a vise-like grip.

a mercy (2008)

Here Morrison delves further into the past, portraying the slave trade of the 1680s. A Mercy follows an Anglo-Dutch adventurer who takes in a young woman named Florens after she is exchanged in settlement of a debt. Knowing how to read and write, he works on his farm, seeking connection and protection from his co-workers in a kind of parable, a pilgrim’s hesitant path to reconciliation.

house (2012)

Frank Money, a young black Korean War veteran, returns home only to find himself thrust back into America’s race wars as he grapples with the specter of combat. He eventually finds himself in his once hated Georgia hometown to save his abused younger sister, a journey that seems to be his saving grace.

god help the child (2015)

the first of morrison’s novels set in the 21st century, god help the child deals with colorism. her main character, the bride, is a beautiful and confident dark-skinned woman, but her traits cause her lighter-skinned mother to withhold love and instead subject her to abuses. Once again, Morrison delves into the inherent tensions between mothers and daughters, the rifts that lurk in even the most intimate relationships.

the source of self-esteem (2019)

As the last book published before his death, this nonfiction collection is a stunning culmination of some of Morrison’s most powerful speeches and essays. From a eulogy of James Baldwin to meditations on Gertrude Stein, Martin Luther King, Jr. and painter romare bearden, brilliantly ponders wealth, female empowerment, and the black imagination.

recitative (2022)

First published in 1983 and published in hardcover last month, morrison’s only short story is a formal experiment that fuels and defies our expectations, a game of chess that is destined to win. As 8-year-olds, Twyla and Roberta are “abandoned” for four months at a home for orphaned and runaway girls; As Twyla points out, “My mom danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” inside st. Bonaventure, are hapless pawns near the bottom of the social pecking order, just above Maggie, the mute, disabled kitchen helper. But the literary queen has a gambit up her sleeve: one girl is white and the other is black, and Morrison confuses her racial identities through a series of moves that undermine historical hierarchies and simple binaries. when the girls meet again as women, they search for the truth about what, exactly, happened so many years before. Zadie Smith offers an incisive and surprising introduction, illustrating the burdens the author placed on herself and all of us, stepping out of her comfort zone as she tirelessly advocates “the African-American culture from and towards which Morrison writes.” “.

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