Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African American characters who are central to their narratives. Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love and A Mercy. Morrison has earned a plethora of book-world accolades and honorary degrees, also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Source
Excerpt from "Song of Solomon" 1
You think dark is just one color, but it ain’t. There’s five or six kinds of black. Some silk, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don’t stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is like pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.
Published:
1977
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Black Arts Movement
Anthology Years:
2021
Themes:
Identity
Intersectionality & Culture
Literary Devices:
Asyndeton
the absence of a conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so…) between phrases and within a sentence
Rhetorical Question
a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered