Inside/Outdoor Sign Savvy in Morrison’s “Recitatif” and Paradise

Abstract

Abstract: In her 1993 Nobel Lecture in Literature , Toni Morrison asserts: “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives” (22). The Dancing Mind (1996), her extended meditation on the art of reading and writing, laments language proficiency as an imperiled survival skill. A Mercy ’s (2008) Florens confirms, however, that locating “[w] hich is the true reading” matters less than the reading itself since language itself is “a way” (139). If we adopt a neo-domestic/eco-critical approach, we not only address Morrison’s disparagement toward a state of modern criticism that talks about itself as though it were the work of art (LeClair, 376–77), but adhere to her directive that the critic should trail the writer. Tracking her use of ordinary inside/outdoor imagery allows us to solve the respective riddles of “Recitatif” (1983) and Paradise (1998): which girl is what race and who is the shot white girl.