Morrison's Concepts Flashcards
Rememory
An approach that views history not as a series of significant events marked by…
a.) wars/national crisis
b.) newspapers
c.) textbooks
d.) traditional historical events
(as these reflect a white male perspective and discounts people of color and women)
- Morrison developed her own idea of how to establish an authentic identity called rememory, because typical historical documents do not reflect the black community’s experience (the only way to see the past authentically is to look at ‘life as lived’)
Rememory creates an authentic identity through…
a.) collective experiences
b.) poems
c.) songs
d.) personal stories
What is an epigraph?
An introductory citation that suggests the theme of a literary work- usually a quotation from a renowned literary source.
- Morrison’s use of epigraph defies tradition as she created her own epigraph that is not from a literary source.
Epigraph to S.O.S.
“The fathers may soar
And the children may know their names.”
Song of Solomon is the story of how Milkman discovers his identity through the process of rememory (whereas he creates an identity that isn’t based on a white perspective).
Analysis of S.O.S’s epigraph
The first line ‘soars’ above the bottom; structure mimics meaning.
- The ‘fathers’ represent the black father and suggests that in Morrison’s words:
“…that black fathers may leave - but the children know who they are; they remember, half in glory and half in accusation…and it is the children who remember, sing about it, mythologize it, and make it a part of their family history.”
Soar: introduces the theme of flight and explores the reasons fathers may soar: to escape death, to pursue a better life, to seek freedom. In S.O.S, the epigraph foreshadows the dynamics of the novel’s four generations of a black family in which “the father figure is either physically or emotionally absent.”
- As long as children ‘know their names’ [their fathers/their ancestors] Morrison suggests that they can cope with the handicap.
Morrison’s biography
Born:
Chloe Anthony Woffard [February 18th, 1931 - [died] August 5th, 2019]
Parents:
- George Woffard [laborer]
- Ramah Wofford [homemaker] *her name picked blind [Bible]
Morrison started writing short stories while attending Howard University [name changed to Toni]
- She felt that African American literature was bereft - not written to her or to the black people she knew. [black people talking to black people]
“I had nothing left but my imagination. I had no will, no judgment, no perspective, no power, no authority, no self - just this brutal sense of irony, melancholy, and a trembling respect for words. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly -compulsively - slyly.”
- Toni Morrison
Timeline
1964 → divorced husband [two sons from her marriage: Harold and Slade.
1965 → textbook editor for Random House
1967 → promoted to Senior Editor
1970 → published Bluest Eye
1973 → published Sula
1974 → published The Black Book - a tribute to the anonymous black man…a black history book that recollected life as lived [slave auction announcements, letters, graphic photographs, patents granted to African Americans, etc.]
1977 → Song of Solomon
1978 → Song of Solomon receives National Book Critics Award for fiction
Highlights and Firsts:
- 1st African American writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature
- Song of Solomon chosen as a main selection [1977] of the Book-of-the-Month Club [last black
author since Wright’s Native Son in 1940] - Morrison first black woman since Zora Neale Hurston in 1943 to appear on a Time Magazine
cover
Hagar
Two most destructive ideas in Western civilization (our concepts of): romantic love and physical beauty.
- Hagar’s death is a result of her perceptions of love, and she deems the reason for its failure on her appearance.
Physical beauty as a destructive force:
Hagar was convinced that her whole life depended on “whether or not those aluminum teeth would meet”.
- Hagar’s mental break stems from Reba + Pilate’s segregation from their community to spoil Hagar as a child
Flashback
A device by which the writer presents incidents that occurred prior to the ongoing action
Flashback
3 types
a.) Recollections of characters [internal dialogue]
- s. Milkman recalling following his mother while waiting to be murdered
b.) Narratives by characters [external dialogue]:
- s. Pilate’s conversation with Ruth
c.) Dream sequence [dreams that reveal how previous events/perceptions create present attitude]
- s. tulip dream → Milkman’s indifference
Passing
Describes the assimilation of a person of color into the white majority to avoid racial segregation and discrimination
- benefits the ‘passer’ in some way; deemed as an attempt to erase culture/history/racial pride by the respectful community
Dangers of passing
Passing as white and using whiteness to uplift other black people was the best way to undermine the system that relegated black people to a lower position in society.
- Some people that were able to pass as white were sometimes known for leaving the A.A. community and getting an education, later to return and assist with racial uplifting
- Others saw themselves best fitting within white society and would “suck up to” the views and beliefs of the average white male to experience a sense of superiority
look for context behind why MM is called the c-slur by other black men
Voice
s. “Tommyisms”
repetitive language that helps to establish tone
