The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison

The most substantial collection of critical essays on Morrison to appear since her death in mid-2019, this book contains previously unpublished essays which both acknowledge the universal significance of her writing even as they map new directions. Essayists include pre-eminent Morrison scholars, as well as scholars who work in cultural criticism, African American letters, American modernism, and women’s writing.

The book includes work on Morrison as a public intellectual; work which places Morrison’s writing within today’s currents of contemporary fiction; work which draws together Morrison’s ＂trilogy＂ of Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise alongside Dos Passos’ USA trilogy; work which links Morrison to such Black Atlantic artists as Lubaina Himid and others as well as work which offers a reading of ＂influence＂ that goes both directions between Morrison and Faulkner. Another cluster of essays treats seldom-discussed works by Morrison, including an essay on Morrison as writer of children’s books and as speaker for children’s education. In addition, a ＂Teaching Morrison＂ section is designed to help teachers and critics who teach Morrison in undergraduate classes.

The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison is wide-ranging, provocative, and satisfying; a fitting tribute to one of the greatest American novelists.

Kelly Reames is Associate Professor of English at Western Kentucky Unviersity, USA.

Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She was the 2011 recipient of the Hubbell Medal for lifetime service in American literature (sponsored by the MLA), and has received the Guggenheim fellowship, the senior National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, the Bunting Institute fellowship, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Philosophical Association and others. She has published more than fifty-five books of criticism, some edited, including Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and ＂Favored Strangers＂ Gertrude Stein and Her Family (1995), as well as studies of Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. Recent books are A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present (2013) and Toni Morrison and the Maternal (2014).