The Voice of Toni Morrison on History and Womanist Thought

Pages:120-121
Jyoti Deswal (Department of English, Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana)

Toni Morrison (1931- ), a Nobel laureate, has attained a central place in the American literary world. Her award-winning novels chronicle the lives of Afro-Americans and explore the impact of socio-historic forces pitted against them. Using precise, richly textured prose and compelling characters, Morrison deftly examines the role of family in her novels. Women are invisible in the history, throughout the world. There is a lack of representation of women in it. There is also a misrepresentation of African American women in the history. African American women have been playing an integral part in the building of America, but their participation and contribution have not been properly represented in the history of America. All of Morrison’s novels are, in a real sense, historical novels, which are based on slavery, reconstruc-tion, depression, and war, and Civil Rights Movement and the experience of personal history. It is commented that “[Morrison’s writing is] richly revelatory not only of human nature but of the troubled history of black America.”