Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Morrison, Toni - Morrison’s Works

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Morrison’s Works

• CRITICAL RECEPTION
• ART IMITATING LIFE
• MORRISON AND THE MOVIES
• NOTES

The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.

In a 1984 essay titled “Memory, Creation, and Writing,” Morrison wrote, “I want my fiction to urge the reader into active participation in the non-narrative, nonliterary experience of the text, which makes it difficult for the reader to confine himself to a cool and distant acceptance of data.“¹ Her concern is writing novels that cannot easily be consumed and then discarded. She wants her readers to look beneath the surface of her stories, which often are quite simple, and to focus on the experience of reading in much the same way she believes a person experiences works of art or musical compositions; that is, without having to rely on prior literary...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. About Toni Morrison
3. Morrison at Work
4. Morrison’s Era
5. Morrison’s Works
6. Morrison on Morrison and on Writing
7. Morrison as Studied
8. Study Questions
9. Bibliography
10. Copyright

1. Toni Morrison