The literature, like the music, depends on a communal understanding, and the creativity is held together by a constant beat, like the double bass in an improvisation. As a jazz musician, my personal experience with the theory of the blues and improvisation allows me to observe the release and tension technique within Toni Morrison's work. ... Morrison intends her work to appear improvised, her words sinuous, like the music of the black culture, which does not rely on words to convey expression; her use of streams of consciousness and non-linear narrative represent such a lyrical style. ...

• Word Count: 3100
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography

So when I got here, even before they let me get out of bed, I stitched her a little something from a piece of cloth Baby Suggs had. ... Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. ... When presented the notion that Sethe, and not her children, is her own "best thing", her reply takes the form of a question, "Me? Me?"... The black community played a major role in Beloved, especially with th...

• Word Count: 3106
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

This figure has been much speculated upon, and when questioned about it, Morrison says, "Some historians told me that two hundred million died. ... This solid community of freed black people gives her a source of source of strength, hope, and comfort. ... The Clearing allowed " freed blacks to set up their own type of worship services separate from white society and the organized white Christian church .Significantly, the leader of this group is Baby Suggs, who stands in contrast to the powerful men who head the larger white church. Speaking from her place on a "huge flat-sided rock," a po...

• Word Count: 3712
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

This figure has been much speculated upon, and when questioned about it, Morrison says, "Some historians told me that two hundred million died. ... This solid community of freed black people gives her a source of source of strength, hope, and comfort. ... The Clearing allowed " freed blacks to set up their own type of worship services separate from white society and the organized white Christian church .Significantly, the leader of this group is Baby Suggs, who stands in contrast to the powerful men who head the larger white church. Speaking from her place on a "huge flat-sided rock," a po...

• Word Count: 3715
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

Pecola is a young black girl who throughout the story is critiqued, shamed, and virtually destroyed due to the corrupt morals of her society. ... Pecola Breedlove is a young black girl who is the hero in this analysis. ... Pecola's innocence is debatable in the sense that she desired to belong to a guilty society where a young black girl can be raped by her father, ignored by her mother, and shunned by the community. ...

• Word Count: 3660
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography

Tonni Morrison's novel Sula is about two young black girls who become very close friends but soon depart after taking different paths through life. ... Nel decided to befriend Sula when she discovered her sense of me-ness despite what her mother may have said. ... Sula heard her mother tell a friend "Sure you do, you love her just like I love Sula. I just don't like her. ... It's this insistence that eventually gets read as a recklessness and Sula later becomes a threat as her actions rebels against the rest of the black community's daily life of hardship, humiliation an...

• Word Count: 2894
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: High School

African American women writers helped with the setback of these stereotypes and African American women have been develop to be seen as "living human being[s] with [their] own desires and needs" (Christian, Black Feminist Criticism 16). ... Helene does not want Nel to lose Nel from the community in any shameful way like Helene's Creole family did. ... Nel looks into a mirror and she whispers: "I'm me. ... I'm me. Me" (Morrison 28). ...

• Word Count: 5084
• Approx Pages: 20
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

I was the only black in the class and the only child who could read." Her writing is definitely influenced by how she views her writing functioning much like storytelling in the past. ... Cholly as a child was impressed by watching the father of a family's god-like stance raise a watermelon over his head to smash it on the ground and sees this example as the opposite of the unimpressive white image of God, as the white image is woefully inadequate for Cholly who at this time embraces his African heritage. ... He understands that Morrison is quite attentive to silences and gaps in the...

• Word Count: 2626
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Like vanity. ... Vanity is like unnecessary jewelry. ... He left everybody down on the ground and he sailed on off like a black eagle. ... He soared off as like a strong black eagle, but he never came back for any of his people. ... She requests, " 'Watch Reba for me.' ...

• Word Count: 2878
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Years later, when her oldest daughter Hannah confronts Eva about Plum's death and asks if Eva ever loved her children or ever played with them, Eva's response is typical of the strong black woman: "I'm talkin' 'bout 18 and 95 when I set in that house five days with you and Pearl and Plum and three beets, you snake-eyed ungrateful hussy. What would I look like leapin' 'round that little room playin' with youngins with three beets to my name? ... With you all coughin' and me watchin' so TB wouldn't take you off and if you was sleepin' q...

• Word Count: 2614
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School