Abstract
Drawing from contemporary debates about post-colonial identity, this article focuses on issues of national and individual identity-building as represented in Toni Morrison's novel Paradise (1998). Central to its argument is the idea that the novel offers a critique of essentialism and Manicheism, which are unrelentingly disrupted by difference and hybridity. As Morrison delves into the origins both of the African American community of Ruby and of the female community of the Convent, the reader becomes aware of several key issues. First, the all-black town of Ruby constructs an image of itself as an earthly paradise as a consequence of its engagement with the foundational Puritan myths and rituals at the core of American identity. As a result, Ruby emerges as the City upon a Hill for its inhabitants, and its status as such is reinforced by the jeremiad
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