Toni Morrison’s Shulamites

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Pardes
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Feminine Sexuality ◽  
Love Poem ◽  
The Many

This chapter focuses on Toni Morrison’s renditions of new Shulamites in Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987). The female characters of both novels highlight the power and bold eroticism of the Shulamite’s voice, calling for a different perception of gender relations and feminine sexuality. While offering new representations of femininity, Morrison is no less eager to fashion a new grand Song as a base for a redefinition of the African-American community. In Song of Solomon, the ancient biblical love poem merges with African folk songs and legends and in Beloved, the ghostly Beloved is both a tormented and tormenting Shulamite as well as the spirit of the many slaves whose sufferings she embodies. Special attention is given to Morrison’s response to African-American commentaries on the verse ‘I am black, but comely’ and to points of affinity between her exegesis and feminist biblical criticism in the 1970s and 1980s.

scholarly journals The Experience of Alienation in Toni Morrison’s Work: Man’s Fragmentation and Concomitant Distortion

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Mohammed Mahameed ◽  
Majed Abdul Karim
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Work

The question of alienation has always been a pervasive theme in the history of modern thought, and it occupies a considerable place in contemporary work. Literature in general, and fiction in particular, raise this issue to reveal its influence on human beings and communities. Novelists have been trying to unravel its complexities and concomitant consequences. The paper aims to explore the experience of alienation through depicting the issue not as a purely racial reality, or something restricted to the colour of the skin or gender of the victim. It is rather presented as a distressing state which cripples the victims and makes them susceptible captives of the dominant forces. In the selected novels, Toni Morrison has delved deep into the experience of alienation through her male and female characters, showing the different forms of this experience. The present research investigates Morrison’s portrayal of the issue from an African-American prospect. References will be made to novels such as Tar Baby, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.

scholarly journals Unbought and Unbossed: The National Political Congress of Black Women

Perceptions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Morales
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Crack Cocaine ◽  
African American Community ◽  
American Women ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Voter Suppression ◽  
The Many

The purpose of this research paper was to further analyze and deconstruct the National Political Congress of Black Women and its impact within the African-American community. I then decided to delve into issues regarding the African-American community, in particular its impact on African-American women. After researching matters such as voter suppression and voter turnout in the African-American community, I was able to conclude that due to the NPCBW, voter turnout amongst African-American women increased considerably. This resulted in higher voter turnout rates and political participation on behalf of African-American women that was unforeseen before the involvement of the NPCBW. Additionally, treatment received by African-American women during the AIDs epidemic throughout the 1980s and 1990s concerned me. I began to conduct intensive research and was able to find that the National Political Congress of Black Women campaigned for African-American women to receive better treatment in their fight against a nearly fatal disease. Among the many surrounding factors which contributed to this affliction was the dispersion of crack cocaine among African-American neighborhoods. After coming to this realization, the NPCBW took an active stance in combatting the drug epidemic plighting African-American neighborhoods, resulting in the diminishment of HIV infection rates among African-American women. After concluding my research, I was able to surmise that the National Political Congress of Black Women did not only directly affect the lives of African-American Women, but instead left a firm foundation and legacy for African-American women to champion against discriminatory treatment.

scholarly journals A Study on the Postmodern Narrative Features in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Miaomiao WANG ◽  
Chengqi LIU
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Future Development ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Narrative Conventions

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is renowned as the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Her third novel Song of Solomon was written in the context of postmodernism, which embodies a variety of postmodern narrative features. Postmodern works are frequently inclined to ambiguity, anarchism, collage, discontinuity, fragmentation, indeterminacy, metafiction, montage, parody, and pluralism. Such postmodern narrative features as parody, metafiction and indeterminacy have been manifested in Song of Solomon. In this novel, Toni Morrison employs the strategy of parody in order to subvert traditional narrative modes and overthrow the western biblical narrative as well as African mythic structure. Meta-narratives are also used in the text to dissolve the authority of the omniscient and omnipotent narrator. By questioning and criticizing the traditional narrative conventions, Morrison creates a fictional world with durative indeterminacy and unanswered problems. Through presenting parody, metafiction and indeterminacy, this paper attempts to analyze the postmodern narrative features in Song of Solomon and further explore Morrison’s writing on the African-American community and its future development.

PROBLEMATIKA MAJČINSTVA U ROMANU „VOLjENA“ TONI MORISON

Lipar ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (74) ◽  
pp. 187-201
Author(s):  
Jelena Abula ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
African American Mothers ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
And Gender

This paper will examine the concept of motherhood in the light of black feminism in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Morrison, one of the most prominent writers of the 20th century, is trying to present the development of the African- American community and the institution of motherhood in a society characterized by meaningless divisions between race, class and gender. Slavery problematizes the concept of motherhood which represents a connection of conflicting views shaped by different attitudes towards race, gender and class. Therefore, Morrison uses the suppressed voices of African-American mothers to address the problematic concept of motherhood in slavery. The paper explores the complexity of slavery and its influence on motherhood, the powerful ideology through which the Afro-American tradition is transferred, and it also outlines motherhood as a dominant motif that connects the female characters in Beloved.

Relasi Gender dalam Keragaman Qira'at

SUHUF ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Ali Fakhrudin
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Many

Knowledge of  qirā’at  until now has only been regarded as under-standing the various methodologies used in reciting the Quran. There has been very little research into analyzing the implications of recitative differences in terms of their purpose, although the many versions of qira’at rightly give rise to differing exegesis. This paper seeks to examine the implication of Qur’anic recitation in those religious verses that concern gender relations. There are many religious verses that address gender differences but this paper only examines verses connected with the opposite sexes shaking hands and permission for women to work outside the home.  This second verse is mentioned because until now there has often been the viewpoint that women ought not work outside the home as long as men and women shake hands at the beginning and end of business matters. For that reason, this paper is very suitable for analysis as a reminder that very rarely is there a person who interprets the Qur’an from an angle of familiarity with various qira’at.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document