Dangerous freedom
Subtitle: fusion and fragmentation in Toni Morrison's novels
By: Philip Page.
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Jackson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: Morrison, Toni -- Criticism and interpretation.; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; African American women in literature.; African Americans in literature.
Description: The novels of Toni Morrison depict a disjointed culture striving to coalesce in a racialized society. No other contemporary writer conveys this "double consciousness" of African-American life so faithfully. As her characters struggle to negotiate meaningful roles and identities, and as they confront the inescapable issue of division, her novels are permeated with motifs of fragmentation. This divided entity is a theme repeated throughout Morrison's fiction.

Operating on many levels, this plurality-in-unity affects narrators, chronologies, individuals, couples, families, neighborhoods, races.

Philip Page's critical interpretation of Morrison's first six novels - Sula, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Jazz, and Tar Baby - places her fiction in the forefront of American culture, African-American culture and contemporary thought.

Her fiction has the power to expand the souls of all readers by taking them into the recesses of other souls-in-process, by requiring them to work the traumas and dilemmas those other souls endure, and by challenging them to know, accept, and keep open their own dangerous freedom.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [209]-223) and index.