Toni Morrison

American author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In her works Toni Morrison has explored the experience of black women in a racist culture. She has been a member of both the National Council on the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Morrison has actively used her influence to defend the role of the artist and encouraged the publication of other black writers. [Read more]

Paradise
Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, hardcover (PhP 150.00)
In "Paradise"--her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature--Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain," assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, "Paradise" tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void "Out There... where random and organized evil erupted when and where it chose." Richly imagined and elegantly composed, "Paradise" weaves a powerful mystery.

Song of Solomon
Signet Books, 1978 (PhP 80.00)
Morrison creates a black community strangely unto itself yet never out of touch with the white world. With an ear as sharp as glass she has listened to the music of black talk and uses it as a palette knife to create black lives and to provide some of the best fictional dialogue around today: a beautiful balance between language and thought.

Sula
Plume Books, 1982 (PhP 100.00)
This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines from their close-knit childhood in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation. New Wright has chosen to stay in the place where she was born, to marry, raise a family, and become a pillar of the black community. Sula Peace has rejected the life Nel has embraced, escaping to college, and submerging herself in city life. When she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel and a wanton seductress. Eventually, both women must face the consequences of their choices. Together, they create an unforgettable portrait of what it means and costs to be a black woman in America.