Toni Morrison race, gender and language

Toni Morrisonrace, gender and language Hao Guilian, Ph.D. Yunnan Normal University Fall, 2009

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.

Historical context Race Relations in the 1950s: Segregation Race Relations in the 1960s: Civil Rights Activism Race Relations in the 1970s: Busing

Race Relations in the 1950s: Segregation种族隔离 • In the 1950s, communities throughout the country, particularly in the South, had segregated public facilities, including schools, public transportation, and restaurants. Throughout the country, social and cultural segregation was the norm. There were several landmark events in the struggle for racial equality during this decade and it is considered to mark the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1954, overturning a 1896 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional, though integration would occur gradually. The decision was met with strong resistance from politicians and the public alike. The state government of Arkansas defied the Supreme Court and attempted to prevent black children from entering and integrating the Little Rock public schools. Blacks became organized around other forms of segregation as well. In 1956 Rosa Parks, a middle-aged seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham, Alabama, bus for a white commuter, igniting a year-long bus boycott. Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as the leader of the movement.

Race Relations in the 1960s: Civil Rights Activism民权运动 • Blacks began to stage “sit-ins” at white lunch counters and restaurants across the South in protest of segregation. Northern students, radicalized by their opposition to the Vietnam War, joined the Civil Rights Movement in greater numbers, participating in marches and voter registration drives. More middle-class whites became enamoured of black culture and more blacks became aware of their African roots.

Organized demonstrations were planned, with both black and white student activists participating in “freedom rides” to the South in protest of segregated interstate public transportation policies. Martin Luther King rose to national prominence, promoting a philosophy of nonviolence. A number of activists, both black and white, were killed as a result of their positions, and King himself was assassinated in 1968. King’s death led to intense disillusionment among many, followed by greater divisiveness among activists, the rise of Black Power separatism, and renunciation in some quarters of the nonviolent approach.

Race Relations in the 1970s: Busing种族融合 • While much of the racial conflict of the 1960s took place in the South, Northern cities became more of a flashpoint in the Civil Rights strife of the 1970s. Economic strain and police brutality contributed to race riots in a number of cities, which alienated some white activists. One of the most significant triggers to racial tension in the North was the institution of busing to ensure the desegregation of schools. 1971 marked the beginning of court-ordered school busing.

Courts declared that “de facto” segregation existed in many northern urban school districts and found it to be illegal. This meant that the courts found Northern schools to be effectively segregated due to the existing racial mix in many school districts and neighborhoods, and that children must be bused out of their neighborhoods in order to ensure a fair access to educational resources. Busing ignited protests and outbreaks of violence in many communities. In the same time period, many blacks began to benefit from more equitable laws, entering politics and other positions of power in unprecedented numbers.

Toni Morrison: life history • Morrison received her B.A. from Howard University (where she changed her name to Toni) and M.A. from Cornell University (major was English) • Married Harold Morrison (Jamaican Architect) in 1957, divorce after six years and two sons. • Has taught in several colleges and universities including Texas Southern University, Howard University, State University of New York in Albany, and Princeton. • Became Senior Editor at Random House Publications since 1965.

Toni Morrison: writing career • Her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), was a story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. • In 1975 her novel Sula (1973) was nominated for the National Book Award. • Her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977), brought her national attention. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award. • In 1987 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical success. Shortly afterward, it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the American Book Award. In May 2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty-five years.

In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first black woman to win it. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." • Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist. She has stated that she thinks "it's off-putting to some readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."

Toni MorrisonNobel Lecture December 7, 1993 • "Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.

One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.

The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.

“Recitatif” (1983) A “recitatif” or “recitative” is “a vocal style in which a text is declaimed in the rhythm of natural speech with slight melodic variation” (American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1997). The story is Twyla’s recitatif.

“My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick. That's why we were taken to St. Bonny's.” Thus begins Twyla's narrative of her long-term, intermittent relationship with Roberta, another eight-year-old who shares her failing grades and not real orphan status at St. Bonaventure's, the shelter where they live for a few months.

The two girls become fast friends despite the discomfort occasioned by the situation, their problematic mothers (Roberta's is hyper-religious and unfriendly; Twyla's is pretty but childlike, an embarrassment to Twyla because of her casual clothing and behavior), and their racial differences (one is white, one African-American). They also share a defining moment, in which they watch bigger girls assault Maggie, a disabled woman who works in the institution's kitchen.

The girls meet by accident four more times; as young adults in a Howard Johnson's, where Twyla works and Roberta stops in with two young men on the way to the coast for an appointment with Hendrix; in a grocery store in Newburgh, the blue-collar town on the Hudson river where Twyla lives (Roberta lives in white-collar Annandale); at a picket line against a busing plan (Roberta is protesting the busing; Twyla ends up picketing for it); and finally in a diner on Christmas Eve. Each time they meet, they piece together what has happened in their lives, but also return to the defining moment of Maggie, arguing about what really happened and what role they played in the abuse.

Doubles • “Recitatif” is a story of doubles, one black and one white, but the reader can’t say for sure which is which; • Both are misfits in the orphanage: they don’t have “beautiful dead parents in the sky”; their mothers are alive: • Twyla’s mother dances late • Robert’s is sick • Bad students: • Twyla “couldn’t remember” things • Roberta can’t read

Racial Ambiguity • P.323 Roberta “a girl from a whole other race” (but which?) • P.324 “like salt and pepper” • P329. “Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world” • P.332“how it was in those days: black—white” • P.333 bussing (to integrate schools black & white): Twyla’s son Joseph is getting bussed; but Roberta’s kids face the same prospect

Roberta challenges Twyla to remember parts of her past Twyla prefers to forget • Twyla’s and Roberta’s identities are defined in relation to one another: “Actually my sign didn’t make sense without Roberta’s” (signs depend on one another) • In the present, they are one another’s racial and class “other” • They collaborate to reconstruct their shared past and bridge their differences of class and race

Point of View • Twyla is the main character and also the narrator of the story. She describes the events in the first person, from her own perspective, and the events are presented as Twyla remembers them. • One of the places where point of view is most pivotal is in terms of memories of Maggie. Since Roberta had shared with Twyla this important and formative time at the orphanage, her differing recollections shake Twyla’s confidence in her own ability to remember accurately, but also feed her existing distrust of Roberta.

Race and Racism • The issue of race and racism is central to the story. Twyla’s first response to rooming with Roberta at St. Bonny’s is to feel sick to her stomach. Throughout the story Twyla and Roberta’s friendship is inhibited by this sense of an uncrossable racial divide, played out against the background of national racial tensions. Racial conflicts provide the main turning points in the story’s plot. At no point, however, does Morrison disclose which girl is black and which is white. She offers socially and historically specific descriptions in order to flesh out her characterizations of Twyla and Roberta, and some of these descriptions may lead readers to come to conclusions about the characters” races based on associations, but none is definitive.

For example, when Roberta shows up at the Howard Johnson’s where Twyla works, on her way to see Jimi Hendrix, she’s described as having “hair so big and wild I could hardly see her face.” This may suggestthat Roberta is black and wore an afro, a style for black hair popular in the 1960s. During this same period, however, hair and clothing styles (and music such as that of black rocker Hendrix) crossed over between black and white youths, and many whites wore their hair big and wild. Likewise, Roberta’s socioeconomic progress from an illiterate foster care child to a rich executive’s wife may suggest that she is white because of the greater economic power of whites in general. In Twyla’s words, “Everything is so easy for them.” Although economic class can be associated with race, there are plenty of white firemen and black executives. Race divides Twyla and Roberta again and again, and Morrison’s unconventional approach to character description suggests that it is the way that blacks and whites are defined (and define themselves) against each other that leads to this divide.

In an interview with Elissa Schappell for the Paris Review Morrison explains that her objective as a black writer in a white-dominated culture is to attempt to “alter language, simply free it up, not to repress it or confine it, but to open it up. Tease it. Blast its racist straightjacket.” This is her intention in not naming the races of the two women in “Recitatif.” • In ‘Recitatif’racial identities are shifting and elusive. . . . Questions beget questions in Morrison’s text, and all require strenuous consideration. Despite most readers” wishes to assess, settle, draw conclusions, Morrison is resolute in requiring readers to participate in creating meaning.” • Henry Louis Gates, Jr., aptly describes the power of Morrison’s writing as lying in the fact that it is “at once difficult and popular. A subtle craftsperson and a compelling weaver of tales, she ‘tells a good story,” but the stories she tells are not calculated to please.”

In conclusion… • Years ago the decision to award her the Nobel Prize caused surprise and partly objection: critics regarded it as a mere gesture of political correctness. Yet, she • Plays an important role in bringing African American literature into the mainstream, and • Is among the most prominent authors in world literature; • Her works belong to the American canon.

Toni Morrison race, gender and language