“A Knowing So Deep It's Like a Secret”: Recent Approaches to Race, Identity, and Transformation in Toni Morrison's Fiction

Abstract

Abstract: In the burgeoning field of Toni Morrison studies, three scholars have recently made original contributions to the field with their interdisciplinary scholarship, showing a trend in Morrison studies of forging new readings through the use of comparative and cross-cultural techniques. In so doing, Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber, K. Zauditu-Selassie, and Rebecca Hope Ferguson help to elucidate Morrison's complex relationship to the past and to African and American culture as well as the consistent ethical concerns across her body of work. Zauditu-Selassie focuses primarily on Morrison's references to African cosmology, while Ferguson and Schreiber take interdisciplinary approaches to key themes (transition, exchange, and the concept of home) in Morrison's work. While Ferguson and Schreiber tend to problematize Morrison's relationship to an African past, Zauditu-Selassie takes a much more celebratory approach regarding her use of cultural and spiritual references.