English Language and Literature Commons^™

Reading, Learning, Teaching Toni Morrison, Karen Stein

Karen F Stein

Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel Prize winning fiction author, is an unabashedly confrontational author. Her profound and complex novels address problems such as slavery, violence, poverty, and sexual abuse. Her work encompasses a project of total cultural renewal: she re-imagines and reaffirms the experience of African-Americans from the days of slavery up to the present, avoiding stereotypes or oversimplification. She employs African and Western literary traditions and conventions as bases for both structure and critique, re-writing some of the "master narratives" of American culture and history.