Song of Solomon (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Toni Morrison
- First Published: 1977
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: African Americans, Family or family life, North America or North Americans, Self-discovery, United States or Americans, Racism, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Midwest, Oppression, Folklore, Michigan, Flight, Terrorism or terrorists
- Locales: Detroit, MI, Danville, PA, Mercy, MI, Shalimar, VA
Song of Solomon, for which Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is an enormously complex novel which, at the same time, is her most absolutely clear work; it may be her most popular book.
From the first lines of the book, the novel concerns itself with the idea of black men flying, an image it gets from black folktales which said that in the days of slavery, every now and then a slave would remember how to fly and would fly back to Africa. The main character of the novel, Macon Dead III (who picks up the name Milkman because his mother, Ruth Foster Dead,...
[The entire page is 1925 words long]
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