Role and significance of black community in Toni Morrison's fiction

Abstract

Toni Morrison (1931- ), a Nobel laureate, has attained a central place in the American literary world. Her award-winning novels chronicle the lives of Afro-Americans and explore the impact of socio-historic forces pitted against them. Using precise, richly textured prose and compelling characters, Morrison deftly examines the role of family in her novels. In a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies dedicated to Morrison, guest editor Nancy J. Peterson makes the unarguable claim that and#8213;Morrison has become the American and African (woman) writer to reckon withand#8214; (464). Truider Harris rightly remarks that Morrison has entered literary superstardom: and#8213;By any standard of literary evaluation, Toni Morrison is a phenomenon in the classic sense of an once-in-alifetime rarityand#8214; (9). It is only justifiable then that her works have evoked wide and divergent critical responses. A broad overview of Morrison scriticism would reveal the nature and scope of various approaches to her work.