Word: morrison
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Beloved, Toni Morrison's best-known work, depicts the direct effect of slavery on the lives of a mother and her children who escape the antebellum South. Jazz is about the children of those children, and while they have not lived under slavery, they have lived with its legacy...
...exploring the psychological consequences of slavery in a relatively peaceful period in our country's history, Morrison demonstrates that the World Wars are not the only horrors of the twentieth century. Slavery has not been left behind in the nineteenth century, and its spiritual repercussions still have the power to immobilize and destroy lives...
Most of Jazz is meticulously particularized to this one night triangle of man, woman and girl, Morrison writes, "Violet thought about it all and sighed. 'I though it would be bigger than this. I knew it wouldn't last, but I did think it'd be bigger." But the tragedy between Violet and Joe and Dorcas is not big--not because it is not terrible, but because it is dwarfed by a collective experience of many terrible tragedies...
However miniatures this tragedy may be, Morrison's light hand deftly meshes myth and history and poetry. Her orchestration and craftsmanship create a "brilliant spot of blood...
...Morrison, who wrote the critically acclaimed novel Beloved, gave last year's William E. Massey lectures on the history of American civilization at Harvard. Those lectures, in addition to material she has used in her teaching at Princeton, make up the substance of the book...