Toni Morrison has been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the latter for her novel
Beloved
(1987). She is currently the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities at
Princeton University and is the author of such widely read works as
The Bluest Eye (1970), Song of Solomon
(1977), and Tar Baby (1981).
Sites about Toni Morrison:
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On the Nobel e-Museum site you can listen to a transcript of Morrison’s Nobel
lecture. Links to her biography and the press release announcing her receipt of
the award offer a glimpse of her life and work.
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This comprehensive site dedicated to Morrison includes links to interviews,
biographies, book reviews, and essays.
Life magazine’s Web site includes a section on “Classic Pictures.” Many
of these might be familiar to you, like the picture of Buzz Aldrin on the moon
in 1969 (http://www.life.com/Life/classicpictures/nasa/4.html)
or the picture of Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington (http://web.archive.org/web/20040404195403/www.life.com/Life/mlk/mlk06.html).
Take a look at these photos and some of the others in the “Features” section of
the Life Web page, http://www.life.com/Life/. How, as Morrison writes, does the media
use images such as these to “narrow our view of what humans look like (or ought
to look like) and what in fact we are like” (Regular, p. 135; Shorter, p. 77)?
Choose a few images and write about what aspect of humans these images portray,
what the authors of these images are attempting to represent by them, and the
extent to which these images are being used to “seduce, reveal, [or] control”
(Regular, p. 135; Shorter, p. 77).
Morrison writes that there are no real strangers, only people who remind us of
some part of ourselves, a part we may not recognize or readily embrace. Choose
one or two images from the following links and write about these “strangers” in
relation to Morrison’s argument. What is familiar? What frightens or startles
you? To what extent do you feel inclined to “reject the figure and the emotions
it provokes—especially when these emotions are profound” (Regular, p. 135;
Shorter, p. 77)?
http://www.lightwork.org/
http://www.photographymuseum.com/
Morrison writes, “Occasionally, there arises an event or a moment that one knows
immediately will forever mark a place in the history of artistic endeavor”
(Regular, p. 135; Shorter, p. 77). Reading this may make you think of the
firefighters raising the flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center after
9/11. Consider some other major events or moments in your lifetime (and beyond)
and the images you associate with those moments. Where do those images come
from? Why do you associate those particular images with those particular events?
In her essay, Morrison quotes Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous line from
No Exit: “Hell is other people.” After reading Sartre’s essay on
existentialism, see if you can expand on Morrison’s use of Sartre. What are the
fundamental conditions an existentialist believes in, and why do these
conditions mean that our actions and choices involve all humanity (i.e.,
strangers)?