Further Reading
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Middleton, David L. Toni Morrison: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987, 186 p.
Includes considerable criticism on Morrison's first four novels, as well as other writings, interviews, and anthologies.
Mix, Debbie. “Toni Morrison: A Selected Bibliography.” Modern Fiction Studies 39, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 1993): 795-818.
Bibliography covering selected criticism on Morrison's novels.
CRITICISM
Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. “Gendering the Genderless: The Case of Toni Morrison's Beloved.” Obsidian II 8, no. 1 (spring-summer 1993): 1-17.
Examines the blurring of conventional notions of gender in Beloved.
Bell, Bernard W. “Beloved: A Womanist Neo-Slave Narrative; or Multivocal Remembrances of Things Past.” In Critical Essays on Toni Morrison's “Beloved,” edited by Barbara H. Solomon, pp. 166-76. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998.
Examination of Beloved as a black feminist text that gives voice to those silenced by slavery.
Bidney, Martin. “Creating a Feminist-Communitarian Romanticism in Beloved: Toni Morrison's New Uses for Blake, Keats, and Wordsworth.” Papers on Language & Literature 36, no. 3 (summer 2000): 271-301.
Contends that critics generally ignore Morrison's regeneration of the work of the major British romantic poets in Beloved.
Cormier-Hamilton, Patrice. “Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: The Journey Away from Self-Love in The Bluest Eye.” MELUS 19, no. 4 (winter 1994): 109-27.
Provides discussion of the idea of self-love, and Pecola's struggles against loving herself and her race.
Dickerson, Vanessa D. “Summoning SomeBody: The Flesh Made Word in Toni Morrison's Fiction.” In Recovering the Black Female Body: Self-Representations by African American Women, edited by Michael Bennett and Vanessa D. Dickerson, pp. 195-216. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Analysis of how Morrison's characters recover and repossess the black female body.
Duvall, John N. “Descent in the ‘House of Chloe’: Race, Rape, and Identity in Tar Baby.” In The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison, pp. 99-117. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
Discusses the importance of Morrison's fourth novel, the critically neglected Tar Baby, and its intertextual references to the Book of Genesis.
Eckard, Paula Gallant. “Toni Morrison.” In Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith, pp. 33-37. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002.
Explores how Morrison combines myth and reality in her treatment of maternal experience in The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved.
Galehouse, Maggie. “‘New World Woman’: Toni Morrison's Sula.” Papers on Language & Literature 35, no. 4 (fall 1999): 339-62.
Explores the independent nature of Sula's title character and raises questions about her accessibility to the reader.
Gillespie, Diane and Missy Dehn Kubitschek. “Who Cares? Women-Centered Psychology in Sula.” In Toni Morrison's Fiction: Contemporary Criticism, edited by David L. Middleton, pp. 61-91. New York: Garland, 1997.
Praises Morrison's representation of female psychological development in Sula.
Iyasere, Solomon O. and Marla W. Iyasere, eds. Understanding Toni Morrison's “Beloved” and “Sula”: Selected Essays and Criticisms of the Works by the Nobel Prize-winning Author. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co., 2000, 381 p.
Thorough examination of Morrison's works, including a lengthy bibliographic resource.
Langer, Adam. “Star Power.” Book (November/December 2003): 40-6.
Provides an overview of Morrison's life and career and discusses her novel Love.
McDowell, Deborah E. “‘The Self and the Other’: Reading Toni Morrison's Sula and the Black Female Text.” In Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, edited by Nellie Y. McKay, pp. 77-90. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988.
Maintains that in Sula, Morrison creates a different kind of identity for the black female in America.
McKay, Nellie. “An Interview with Toni Morrison.” Contemporary Literature 24, no. 4 (winter 1983): 413-29.
McKay talks with Morrison about black women's writing and her first four novels.
Mitchell, Angelyn. “‘Sth, I Know That Woman’: History, Gender, and the South in Toni Morrison's Jazz.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 31, no. 2 (fall 1998): 49-60.
Asserts that in Jazz, Morrison fuses her primary concerns: the lives of black women and the historical circumstances of life in the South.
Peach, Linden. “The 1990s: Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998).” In Toni Morrison, pp. 126-71. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Provides discussion of the themes, motifs, and structure, as well as the cultural and historical context, of Jazz and Paradise.
Peterson, Nancy J. “Toni Morrison Double Issue.” Modern Fiction Studies 39, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 1993): 461-794.
A special double issue containing essays by a variety of critics on Morrison's novels and her place in the literary canon.
Rigney, Barbara Hill. The Voices of Toni Morrison. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991, 127 p.
Examination of Morrison's position within the discourses of both race and gender.
Storhoff, Gary. “‘Anaconda Love’: Parental Enmeshment in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.” Style 31, no. 2 (summer 1997): 290-309.
An examination of the dysfunctional families—both matriarchal and patriarchal—that populate Song of Solomon.
Taylor-Guthrie, Danille, ed. Conversations with Toni Morrison, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994, 293 p.
Collection of interviews and conversations between Morrison and various authors and critics including Alice Childress, Robert Stepto, Gloria Naylor, and Bill Moyers.
Trace, Jacqueline. “Dark Goddesses: Black Feminist Theology in Morrison's Beloved.” Obsidian II 6, no. 3 (winter 1991): 14-30.
Discussion of specific qualities of black feminism and theology in Beloved treating Morrison's use of goddess mythology and its contribution to a new theology for African-American women.
Wagner, Linda W. “Toni Morrison: Mastery of Narrative.” In Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheick, pp. 191-204. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.
Critical assessment of the narrative techniques employed by Morrison in her first four novels.
Willis, Susan. “Eruptions of Funk: Historicising Toni Morrison.” In Reading the Past: Literature and History, edited by Tamsin Spargo, pp. 44-55. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
Originally published in 1987, Willis's essay argues that Morrison's novels explore the question of how to maintain an African-American cultural identity in contemporary society.
Additional coverage of Morrison's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Thomson Gale: African American Writers, Eds. 1, 2; American Writers: The Classics, Vol. 1; American Writers Supplement, Vol. 3; Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vols. 1, 22; Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: Biography and Resources, Vol. 2; Black Literature Criticism, Vol. 3; Black Writers, Eds. 2, 3; Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, 1968-1988; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 29-32R; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 27, 42, 67, 113, 124; Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vols. 4, 10, 22, 55, 81, 87, 173; Contemporary Novelists; Contemporary Popular Writers; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 6, 33, 143; Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, 1981; DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors: British Edition; DISCovering Authors: Canadian Edition; DISCovering Authors Modules: Most-studied, Multicultural, Novelists, Popular Fiction and Genre Authors; DISCovering Authors 3.0; Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Ed. 3; Exploring Novels; Feminist Writers; Literary Movements for Students, Vol. 2; Literature and Its Times, Vols. 2, 4; Literature and Its Times Supplement, Ed. 1; Literature Resource Center; Major 20th-Century Writers, Eds. 1, 2; Modern American Women Writers; Novels for Students, Vols. 1, 6, 8, 14; Reference Guide to American Literature, Ed. 4; St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers; Something about the Author, Vol. 57, 144; Short Stories for Students, Vol. 5; Twayne's United States Authors; and Twentieth Century Romance and Historical Writers.
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