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Toni Morrison

American • English • Novelist • Author
11 books in Langa
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Literature

Books in Langa Library

11 books available from this author.

Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case

Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2010 · English · EPUB

<div> <p>Co-edited and introduced by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Birth of a Nation'hood elucidates as never before the grim miasma of the O.J. Simpson case, which has elicited gargantuan fascination. </p> <p>As they pertain to the scandal, the issues of race, sex, violence, money, and the media are refracted through twelve powerful essays that have been written especially for this book by distinguished intellectuals--black and white, male and female. Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast a chilling gaze on the script and spectacle of the insidious tensions that rend our society, even as they ponder the proper historical, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguistic ramifications of the affair. </p> <p>With contributions by:Toni Morrison, George Lipsitz, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh, Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Ishmael Reed, Leola Johnson and David Roediger, Andrew Ross, Patricia J. Williams, Ann duCille, Armond White, Claudia Brodsky Lacour</p></div> <p>Co-edited and introduced by Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, <b>Birth of a Nation'hood</b> elucidates as never before the grim miasma of the O.J. Simpson case, which has elicited gargantuan fascination.<br><br>As they pertain to the scandal, the issues of race, sex, violence, money, and the media are refracted through twelve powerful essays that have been written especially for this book by distinguished intellectuals--black and white, male and female. Together these keen analyses of a defining American moment cast a chilling gaze on the script and spectacle of the insidious tensions that rend our society, even as they ponder the proper historical, cultural, political, legal, psychological, and linguistic ramifications of the affair.<br><br>With contributions by:<br>Toni Morrison, George Lipsitz, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., with Aderson Bellegarde Francois and Linda Y. Yueh, Nikol G. Alexander and Drucilla Cornell, Kimberl&#233; Williams Crenshaw, Ishmael...
Literary CollectionsLettersSocial ScienceLiterary Criticism+4
Conversations With Toni Morrison

Conversations With Toni Morrison

Univ. Press of Mississippi · 1994 · English · EPUB

Without apology Nobel Prize author Toni Morrison describes herself as an African American woman writer. These collected interviews reveal her to be much more. She has shared space in her creative life for her career in publishing, in teaching, and in being a single parent. Writing, however, is one thing she “refuses to live without.” These interviews beginning in 1974 reveal an artist whose creativity is intimately linked with her African American experience and is fueled by cultural and societal concerns. For twenty years she has created unforgettable characters in her acclaimed novels― *The Bluest Eye* , *Sula* , *Song of Solomon* , *Tar Baby* , *Beloved* , and *Jazz*. Morrison tells her interviewers that her goal as a writer is to present African American life not as sociology but in the full range of its depth, magic, and humanity. “I want my work to capture the vast imagination of black people,” she says. “That is, I want my books to reflect the imaginative combination of the real world, the very practical, shrewd, day-to-day functioning that black people do, while at the same time they encompass some great supernatural element.” Though the scope and the magnitude of her art have brought her international acclaim, even some of her most ardent admirers have viewed her fiction mainly with a focus on class, race, and gender. In these interviews, however, she addresses the artist's concern with moral vision and with a resistance to critical attitudes that categorize black writing largely as sociology. From these interviews comes a greater understanding of Toni Morrison's purpose and the theme of love that streams through her fiction.
Biography & AutobiographyLiteraryLiterary FiguresWomen+8
Desdemona

Desdemona

Bloomsbury Publishing · 2012 · English · EPUB

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars. Morrison's response to Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the female characters, letting them speak and sing in the fullness of their hearts. Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeares doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central, and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.
EnglishIrishScottishWelsh+4
God Help the Child: A Novel

God Help the Child: A Novel

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2015 · English · EPUB

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”
FictionNobel Prize in Literature laureatesMagical RealismWomen+3
Home: A Novel

Home: A Novel

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2012 · English · EPUB

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: an emotional powerhouse of a novel about a modern Odysseus returning to a 1950s America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary Black manWhen Frank Money joined the army to escape his too-small world, he left behind his cherished and fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, he journeys to his native Georgia with a renewed sense of purpose in search of his sister, but it becomes clear that their troubles began well before their wartime separation. Together, they return to their rural hometown of Lotus, where buried secrets are unearthed and where Frank learns at last what it means to be a man, what it takes to heal, and—above all—what it means to come home.
FictionNobel Prize in Literature laureatesWar & MilitaryHistorical+3
Love: A Novel

Love: A Novel

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2003 · English · EPUB

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a spellbinding symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of Black women in a fading beach town. “A marvelous work, which enlarges our conception not only of love but of racial politics.” —Los Angeles Times Book ReviewIn life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.
FictionNobel Prize in Literature laureatesFamily LifeWomen+3
Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations

Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations

Random House · 2019 · English · EPUB

“She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truth-teller. She was a magician with language, who understood the power of words.” - Oprah WinfreyA vital non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered American writersSpanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout Mouth Full of Blood our search for truth, moral integrity and expertise is met by Toni Morrison with controlled anger, elegance and literary excellence. The collection is structured in three parts and these are heart-stoppingly introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11, a meditation on Martin Luther King and a eulogy for James Baldwin. Morrison’s Nobel lecture, on the power of language, is accompanied by lectures to Amnesty International and the Newspaper Association of America. She speaks to graduating students and visitors to both the Louvre and America’s Black Holocaust Museum. She revisitsThe Bluest Eye, Sula and Beloved; reassessing the novels that have become touchstones for generations of readers. Mouth Full of Blood is a powerful, erudite and essential gathering of ideas that speaks to us all. It celebrates Morrison’s extraordinary contribution to the literary world.
Literary CollectionsEssaysPolitical ScienceGeopolitics+11
Song of Solomon: A Novel

Song of Solomon: A Novel

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2007 · English · EPUB

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An official Oprah Winfrey’s “The Books That Help Me Through” selection • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner transfigures the coming-of-age story with this brilliantly imagined novel. Includes a new foreword by the author. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsMilkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world. “Morrison moves easily in and out of the lives and thoughts of her characters, luxuriating in the diversity of circumstances and personality, and revelling in the sound of their voices and of her own, which echoes and elaborates theirs.” —The New Yorker
FictionNobel Prize in Literature laureatesGeneralAfrican American & Black+3
Tar Baby

Tar Baby

Vintage International · 2004 · English · EPUB

<h3>Review</h3><p>“Deeply perceptive. . . . Return[s] risk and mischief to the contemporary American novel.” —John Irving, _The New York Times Book Review </p><p><em>“Toni Morrison has made herself into the D. H. Lawrence of the black psyche, transforming individuals into forces, idiosyncrasy into inevitability.” —</em>New York </p><p><em>“Arresting images, fierce intelligence, poetic language . . . One becomes entranced by Toni Morrison’s story.” —</em>The Washington Post </p><p><em>“Wrenchingly good. A terrific book.” —</em>The Philadelphia Inquirer </p><p><em>“Hypnotic, stunningly alive.” —</em>The San Diego Union-Tribune </p><p><em>“That rare commodity, a truly public novel. . . . Morrison’s genius lies in her uncanny ability to immerse you totally in the world she creates.” —</em>Newsweek </p><p><em>“Powerful. . . . A stunning performance. . . . Morrison is one of the most exciting living American writers.” —</em>Kansas City Star </p><p><em>“It takes one to the sheer edge of human relationships.” —</em>Vogue </p><p><em>“Wise, beautiful, astonishing, absolutely breathtaking.” —</em>St. Louis Globe-Democrat </p><p><em>“Reminds us again that Toni Morrison is one of the finest writers in America today.” —</em>Louisville Courier-Journal </p><p>_“<strong>Tar Baby</strong>_ <em>is stupendous. Morrison is a writer of amazing skill.” —</em>Roanoke Times &amp; World </p><p><em>“Its scope is grand and the interplay complex. But Morrison has the control of a skilled choreographer, with a careful eye pinned on pacing, suspense, grace, and frenzy. . . . She has an awesome lyric flair.” —</em>The Charlotte Observer<br />_</p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, <strong>Tar Baby</strong>_ _is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women. </p> <p>A ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary reinvention of the love story by the legendary Nobel Prize winnerJadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.</p> <div>Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.<div><br></div><div> A magnificent novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of *Beloved*. Morrison probes deeply and sensitively into the realtionships between blacks and whites, blacks and blacks, and women and men, in this raw, emotionally intense narrative set in a rainforest paradise.</div></div>
FictionSocial ScienceLiteraryDomestic fiction+17
The Dancing Mind

The Dancing Mind

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2007 · English · EPUB

<div> <p>On the occasion of her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on the sixth of November, 1996, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison speaks with brevity and passion to the pleasures, the difficulties, the necessities, of the reading/writing life in our time. </p> <p>"She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller. </p> <p>" —Oprah Winfrey</p></div> <p>On the occasion of her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on the sixth of November, 1996, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison speaks with brevity and passion to the pleasures, the difficulties, the necessities, of the reading/writing life in our time.</p> <p>"She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller.</p> <p>" —Oprah Winfrey</p> On the occasion of her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on the sixth of November, 1996, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison speaks with brevity and passion to the pleasures, the difficulties, the necessities, of the reading/writing life in our time.<br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>
Literary CriticismShort StoriesSocial ScienceEssays+3
The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1993

The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 1993

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · 2009 · English · EPUB

<p>Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, reads the speech she delivered in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.</p> <p>
Nobel Prize in Literature laureatesEssaysAfrican American & BlackAmerican+3