Reading Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison has touched an enormous swath of our national and global society through her writing. She has attained the highest heights in literature—including the Nobel Prize—and has earned her place in the literary canon, ranking among the most important American writers of all time.

In Reading Toni Morrison, Professor A.J. Verdelle of Morgan State University will bring new insight and context to the work of an American literary master, one whose project was ultimately to write about Black people and their experiences through their own eyes. You’ll see how this project changed American literature and created works that have become revered, even while they’ve also been frequently challenged by institutional censorship. These eight lectures focus primarily on Toni Morrison’s fiction, including novels such as Beloved, Sula, Jazz, The Bluest Eye, and others, but you’ll also survey highlights of her published nonfiction and additional cultural work to get a more thorough picture of her influence and ongoing legacy.

Reading Toni Morrison is designed to be a companion or a catalyst to reading Morrison’s work, not a substitute for the experience. You’ll find that her novels are hard, sad, blunt, unique, and realistic representations of Black life. And while Morrison makes her stories authentic and impressive and difficult to ignore, she does not forgo love or joy or humor, capturing all the complexities and contradictions of the complete human experience. As you’ll see, Morrison revolutionized American literature by allowing Black people the natural complexity of personhood and presenting her characters in precise and compelling language. Toni Morrison has been widely recognized as a genius, as one of the greatest literary talents and cultural icons of the 20th century, and now you’ll see why.

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