Toni
Toni Morrison won this award for her 1987 novel Beloved
Pulitzer Prize
"There is a difference between being put out and being put outdoors. If you are put out, you go somewhere else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go. The distinction was subtle but final.... But the concreteness of being outdoors was
another matter—like the difference between the concept of death and being, in fact, dead. Dead doesn’t change, and outdoors is here to stay." (The Bluest Eye)
Antanaclasis
A minha mãe
Enslaved black woman from Angola/"My mother" in "Portuguese"
"I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs--all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured"
The Bluest Eye
"124 was spiteful"
Beloved
This son of Toni Morrison works as an architect
Harold Ford Morrison
"Once he believed that the sight of her mouth on the dead man’s fingers would be the thing he would remember always." (Song of Solomon, 16)
Decontextualized Language
The original name the Presbyterians give Lina
Messalina
"She was near thirty and, unlike them, had lost no teeth, suffered no bruises, developed no ring of fat at the waist or pocket at the back of her neck. It was rumored that she had had no childhood diseases, was never known to have chicken pox, croup or even a runny nose. She had played rough as a child—where were the scars? Except for a funny-shaped finger and that evil birthmark, she was free of any normal signs of vulnerability."
Sula
"Sth, I know that woman"
Jazz
Toni Morrison worked for this publisher from 1967 to 1983
Random House
“There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They were anything but describable, having been conceived, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed, and indifference. The furniture had aged without ever having become familiar. People had owned it, but never known it.” (The Bluest Eye)
Apophasis/Paralipsis
Florens accidentally breaks this character's arm
Malaik
"She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?"
Song of Solomon
"My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick."
Recitatif
Toni Morrison centered these two authors in her Master's thesis
Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner
"Holding the knife in her right hand, she pulled the slate toward her and pressed her left forefinger down hard on its edge. Her aim was determined but inaccurate. She slashed off only the tip of her finger. The four boys stared open-mouthed at the wound and the scrap of flesh, like a button mushroom, curling in the cherry blood that ran into the corners of the slate." (Sula)
Abjection
A minha mãe does not see this action as a miracle but as "a mercy"
Giving Florens away to Jacob
"All of them, however, each and every one of the intact nine families, had the little mark she had chosen to put after their names: 8-R. An abbreviation for eight-rock, a deep deep level in the coal mines. Blue-black people, tall and graceful, whose clear, wide eyes gave no sign of what they really felt about those who weren't 8-rock like them"
Paradise
"Lickety-lickety-lickety-split."
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison's birth name
Chloe Anthony Wofford
"When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets, and no idea of what or how to feel." (Sula)
Zeugma
Name Every Focalization in A Mercy
Florens; Jacob; Lina; Rebekka; Sorrow; Willard/Scully; A minha mãe
"The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own."
Jazz
"At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late."
The Bluest Eye