Weekly Reader: The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison; The Best Words From The Celebrated Late Author

Weekly Reader: The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison; The Best Words From The Celebrated Late Author




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book with more than 20 letters in the title (57)


When Toni Morrison died in 2019, she left behind a tremendous legacy as one of the best authors of the 20th and 21st century. Her novels such as, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Sula, Jazz, and especially her masterpiece, Beloved are brilliant works with strong themes of racial and gender issues. When one reads a work by Toni Morrison, they are entering the world of a master storyteller.

With apologies to Emily Dickinson, Morrison's book, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations is her letter to the world. It is a collection of her non-fiction essays, speeches, and other works. Published the same year as her death, it is almost set up as Morrison's farewell letter so she can express her views and have the final word.

The book has plenty of great works that express Morrison's views on various topics including race, gender, art, and other issues. The best are:


Part 1: The Foreigner's Home


"The Foreigner's Home"-The majority of the works in Part 1, feature Morrison at her most biting. In many of her essays, Morrison captured a word in its various meanings. In "The Foreigner's Home," she used the term "globalism" in all of its various definitions. She recognized the term as a means for the redistribution of wealth, but she also saw it as a code for forcing Western values and ideals onto other countries and ignoring these other countries' uniqueness. She also noted the globalized view of distorting what is public and destroying what is private.

She cited a book called The Radiance of the King which demonstrates that distorted view of globalism. In the book, a white man is ready to meet the king of an African village. He is possessed with the whole White Man's Burden ideal. It is only after he is humbled and stripped of his conferred dominance, that he is able to achieve Enlightenment and appear before the king.

"Moral Inhabitants"-Morrison took on American History in her works. She often looked at the world from the point of view of people who were considered "the Other" from the white male majority. In this essay, she cited how the writings from the past reflected how many figures really felt about black people, Native Americans, and immigrants. She dryly recounted a statistic from Colonial times which listed slaves right between rice and tar. The statistic also noted how many died, or were drawn back for exportation. (" 'Died', 'drawn back,-strange, violent words that could never be used to describe rice, tar, or turpentine," Morrison wrote)

If that wasn't uncomfortable enough, the quotes from noted historical figures can be an eye opening experience. Morrison used actual quotes from the likes of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Franklin, and William Byrd to reflect their views on those considered "The Other." Byrd's journal entries noted the number of times slaves were whipped. Benjamin Franklin said "Why increase the Sons of Africa by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?"

In a time when people want to deify people from the past, it is important to remember their views no matter how negative that they may be. Being clear and honest about the past recognizes the enemy of hatred and helps people in the present challenge that hatred.


"The Habit of Art"-This essay can be summarized into three words: "Art is fierce." Morrison cited several examples in which people used their art to protest and challenge the world view around them.

Two examples in particular stand out.
One took place during the dictatorship in Haiti in which the government declared that it was illegal for anyone to retrieve and bury anyone killed by the Tonton Mascoutes. They were only to be gathered by a government garbage truck. Fed up, a teacher organized the performance of a certain play that was performed night after night. The Mascoutes assumed that they were just performing a mindless amateur theatrical failing to realize that the performance was heavy in significance. The play was Antigone, which was about a woman who risked execution to bury her deceased brother against her uncle, the king's regulations.

Another example involved a conversation that Morrison had with a writer from North Africa. She begged for Morrison's aid because in her home country, female writers were being shot in the streets because they were considered a threat to the regime. Both examples showed how art can be considered dangerous, but can also be used to fight against oppressive ideals and to tell the truth. Many artists consider those ideals worth facing arrest and dying for.


"Harlem On My Mind: Contesting Memory-Meditations on Museums, Culture, and Integration"- Morrison also wrote about the struggles of the artist in society closer to home. In this essay, she wrote about an exhibit during the 1960's at the Metropolitan Museum of New York called Harlem on My Mind. This exhibit was supposed to be reflective of the art and culture of Harlem, featuring photographs, murals, slides etc of Harlem's mostly black residents.

During an era of great political change, this exhibition met with a lot of controversy, particularly from the black community. They protested the lack of representation either on the committee or in the exhibit. They felt that they were not being represented properly and felt that their artists should speak for themselves and not through someone else's interpretation.

Morrison also recognized how artists of color struggled to be recognized as artists and not just representatives of their ethnic group. She recognized that great strides have been made of recognizing different artists and voices, but more strides needed to be done.


"The Novel Lecture on Literature"-Morrison's speech for accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 is certainly her most famous non-fiction work. It has been antholgized and quoted many times. (I personally have several copies of it in my literature collections.) The reason is because it reflects how important language is to not only writers but to anyone.

She began her speech telling a story about three young people holding a bird and confronting a wise blind elderly storyteller with the question of whether the bird was alive or dead. The storyteller said, "I don't know if the bird is alive or dead, but I know the bird is in your hands. It is in your hands."

The bird could symbolize anything to anybody, the future, youth, leadership. But to Morrison, a celebrated and award winning author, the bird symbolized language. In her speech, Morrison recognized the power language has, not just as a means for communication but as something that could create unity or destruction. Oppressive language could be as destructive as any weapon and convey a sense of mastery that does not encourage separate thoughts or ideas. Language can also bring things and people to life, by associating things with words and empowering others. The words allow people and things to live on even after they are physically gone. The word remains.

Like the storyteller, Morrison challenges her Listeners and Readers to recognize the power that language holds and that we give it that power by our words. The bird is in our hands. What are we going to do with it?


"Cinderella's Stepsisters"-Besides racial issues, Morrison also wrote about gender conflicts. In this brief, but interesting essay, Morrison used Cinderella's stepsisters as a metaphor for women turning on other women.

Sometimes women of different ideologies, personalities, ethnicities, etc. attack each other rather than aid one another. Perhaps they see other women as competition. Perhaps they themselves are oppressed by dominating forces and attack other women perhaps to take out their own frustrations or for themselves to feel superior. Morrison asked that women do not participate "in the oppression of (their) sisters."




Interlude: Black Matters


"Black Matters"-This part features questions about race and gender in literature. Morrison discusses how early American literature was created by people who mixed their old world culture and valuesz with their new surroundings to create a distinctly American style. With early African-Americans, that also came from what Morrison called Africanism, being seen as the Other and being forcibly removed from their homes instead of voluntarily. With the exception of a few published authors and slave narratives, much of the 18th and 19th century views of black people came from the words of white authors.

Morrison cited The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example. While many Readers saw Jim and Huck's journey as a voyage for their freedom, particularly Jim's, Morrison saw Jim's journey in less idealistic terms. She believed that Mark Twain and Huck could only understand Jim's plight through their own perspective. Because of that, Jim is seen less of a complete character, but almost as a plot device what he represents to Huck not who he is on his own. She finds Huck and Tom's mockery of Jim to be unconscionable and reflective of him as a device not a character.

This essay shows how American Literature evolved with the times and how different creators can be used to capture those voices to create a complete picture about what it means to be an American.


"Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature"-It means something when an author who is considered "canon literature," questions that term. In her talent for words and language, Morrison considered calling this essay "canon fodder." She was interested in the double meaning, because the term cannon fodder referred to soldiers, usually from poor or ethnic backgrounds, who were sent to the front lines to die without their sacrifices recognized. The other meaning is canon, the works that are considered the shape of literature, the classics. "When the two words faced each other, the image became the shape of the canon wielded on (or by) the body of law. The book of power announcing an officially recognized set of texts," she said. Morrison recognized how hard it can be for canon literature to be opened to include female writers and writers of color.

Morrison broke down many of the arguments others have had about African-American art such as "African-American art exists but it is inferior." She challenges these assumptions and recognizes how African-American artists and writers use their sociology, culture, history, and struggles to convey their works and how the presence of African-Americans reshaped the American canon.

Morrison analyzed the opening lines of her own works and how she drew from her culture and experiences to convey her literature. For example the opening line from The Bluest Eye is "Quiet as it's kept there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941." Morrison said that this line comes from a familiar phrase urging the listener to keep a secret. She aimed for that cultural intimacy from her own background to draw the Reader into this story of violence and incest. The reference to marigolds suggests a child's way of interpreting the world around her. The narrator recognizes the violent acts towards her friend and uses a superstition that she hears from others to find meaning. This opening line from The Bluest Eye illustrates how an African-American author used her own culture and experiences to shape contemporary literature.


"Gertrude Stein and the Difference She Makes"-One of the best tributes are the ones that one artist pays to another. This essay demonstrates Morrison's tribute to Gertrude Stein, the author who was identified with the Modernist movement.

Morrison particularly analyzes Stein's book Three Lives which tells about three women, Good Anna, Melanctha, and Gentle Lena. Morrison was particularly intrigued by Stein's characterization of Melanctha, the African-American character as compared to the other two German-American women.

Morrison acknowledged that Stein's book dips into some of the racism of her day. Anna and Lena are indentified by their country of origin as German immigrants while Melanctha is American, but is identified by her skin color. There were also comparisons between the light-skinned Melanctha and the darker-skinned, Rose who is considered more dangerous than Melanctha.

However, Morrison also noted that Melanctha is the most developed of the three protagonists in Three Lives. She is the most active and strong willed of the trio. Melanctha also makes the strongest stance for freedom of sexuality and knowledge. Morrison compares Stein's protagonists "Three Lives moves from the contemplation of the asexual spinster's life-the Good Anna-in its struggle for control and meaning, to and through the quest for sexual knowledge (which Stein calls wisdom) in the person and body of Melanctha, an Africanistic woman; to the presumably culminating female experience of marriage and birth-the Gentle Lena."

She also said that while the three women come to sad ends, it is only Melanctha that learns from her experience. She learns about love and acceptance from her friends. Even though Stein wrote like a forward thinking woman of her time, Morrison recognized her ability to capture the voice of a woman that she would have considered The Other.




Part II: God's Language


"God's Language"-In this section, Morrison covers art and literature and where such inspiration comes from. This essay recounts how Morrison created her novel, Paradise and what a word like "Paradise" means to some people. She had to find a way to define such a term that had been seen through religious and spiritual eyes they don't reflect those of her characters. "How to render expressive religious language credibly and effectively in postmodern fiction….which represents the everyday practice of nineteenth-century African-Americans and their children, nor lends itself to postmodern narrative strategies. The second problem then is part of the first: how to narrate persuasively profound and motivating faith in and to a highly securlarized, contemporary "scientific" world. In short, how to reimagine paradise."

Besides defining paradise for her book, Morrison also wrote on a larger scale what it has grown to mean in general. It has been overimagined and overused. Modern religion and narratives fail to capture the early flowery language of Paradise's meaning, in an attempt to claim and own the ideal. Morrison chose instead to reveal the consequences of such terms instead of just defining it.


"Grendel and His Mother"-Like "Cinderella's Stepsisters", Morrison used an older story to find meaning in reality. She looks at the antagonists from Beowulf, Grendel and his mother to analyze how villainy is portrayed in ancient and Postmodern literature.

Grendel is seen as evil incarnate, no history, no motivation. He just is. His mother on the other hand can be identifiable. She seeks vengeance and is driven by love for her son.

John Gardner's novel, Grendel gives a much needed analysis on Beowulf's villain. Morrison saw Grendel as a native, someone perceived as The Other, trying to defend his home from invaders and understanding his place in the world.


"On Beloved"-By far, Morrison's greatest work is Beloved. Morrison often began her works by asking a question. In Beloved's case, the question was how other than equal rights, access, pay etc. does the women's movement define the freedom being sought particularly over control over one's body and how the women's movement involved encouragement of women to support other women.

Morrison recognized these struggles when she chose to tell the story from the point of view of a former slave who killed her daughter rather then return her to slavery. Morrison used her imagination to picture the life of a woman who had to make the decision to save a child from a fate worse than death and to rely on other women when she is haunted by the spirit of that late child. She used Beloved's haunting of Sethe as a metaphor for the past of slavery haunting the people who lived under those institutions.


"Tribute to Romare Beardon"- Morrison recognized artists of many types from Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart to funny man, Peter Sellers. One of those was artist, Romare Beardon.

Just as Morrison saw truth, wisdom, and beauty through words, she felt that Beardon saw those things in color, form, and images. She saw the "aesthetic implications," as Beardon described also in jazz and blues music which was an inspiration for both hers and Beardon's work. She saw the dialogue between Bearden and music as a union between art forms.

She believed that Beardon should be viewed in galleries and recognized as a canon artist.


"Goodbye To All That: Race, Surrogacy, and Farewell"-A true artist knows how to say goodbye in their own way. David Bowie and Johnny Cash summarized their illustrious careers with the music videos for "Lazarus" and "Hurt" respectively with images that called back to the two men in their prime contrasting to their frail appearances. The Beatles ended their partnership with the hit, "The Long and Winding Road" coming full circle with the mournful echo of "yeah, yeah, yeah." (Calling back to the more joyful "She Loves You.") This essay could be considered Morrison's goodbye. After all, it is not difficult to read about her legacy as an African-American female writer and how characters of different races said farewell without thinking of Morrison's own end. Though she died from complications from pneumonia and this may have been unplanned, this essay, the second to the last in this book, is a fitting final word.

Morrison mused on being thought of as an African-American female writer (as though she had a choice to be either African-American or female). She knew that she recognized that her works were going to by definition be about race and gender, so she sought to create works that opened those discussions. She allowed those topics to draw people of all races inward so they can recognize those experiences.

One of the ways that Morrison explored this concept was discussing the relationships between black and white women. Her own work, Beloved involved a powerful moment when Sethe, a former slave, and Amy Denver, a white woman who helped her escape and give birth to her daughter, Denver, have to leave each other. "They speak not of farewell; how to fix the memory of one in the mind of the other or as with Sethe, how to immortalize in the encounter beyond her own temporal life. ...Washing up on the bank of the Ohio River is our knowing that if both women had been the same race they could have, they might have, would have stayed together and shared their fortune."

Morrison recognized the change in paradigms for reading and writing literature and that writers are a part of changing those paradigms. Morrison said, "To the racial anchor that weighed down the language and its imaginative possibilities. How novel would it be if in this case, life imitated art….If, in fact, it I was not a (raced) foreigner but a home girl, who already belonged to the human race."


And she did. Toni Morrison was not just one of the greatest African-American writers, nor one of the greatest women authors. She was one of the greatest human authors.

Classics Corner: Jazz by Toni Morrison; A Book That Sounds As Good As It Reads

Classics Corner: Jazz by Toni Morrison; A Book That Sounds As Good As It Reads




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: If ever a book needed a soundtrack, it would be Toni Morrison's Jazz.

The book not only pays tribute to the freestyle music in the title but in the narrative as well. Characters call and respond to each other by telling the same events from different points of view, repeat phrases like a chorus, and the paragraphs read almost like a musical vibe. For example:

“Crumpled over, shoulders shaking Violet thought about how she must have looked at the funeral at what her mission was. The sight of herself trying to do something bluesy, something hep, fumbling the knife too late away…She laughed til she coughed and Alice had to make them both a cup of setting tea.

Committed as Violet was to hip development even she couldn't drink the remaining malt- watery, warm, and flat tasting. She buttoned her coat and left the drugstore unnoticed at the same moment as that Violet did, that it was spring. In the City.”

You can just hear the accompanying saxophone, guitar, and drums in the background. Feel free to snap your fingers and tap your toes if you like.

The book's narration is excellent but so is the rest of the book. In many of Morrison's other works like Sula and my favorite of her novels, Beloved, she gives us memorable characters caught up in the social issues of their day like slavery, racism, violence, and frictions within friends and family. Morrison does the same with Jazz.

Morrison provides the book with three characters, three sides of a love triangle that are caught in the struggles of unhappy marriages and the power plays between men and women in a relationship.
The three characters: hair stylist, Violet Trace, her husband, Joe, a cosmetics salesman, and his 18-year-old mistress, Dorcas are compelling as they navigate their relationship with each other during the affair and the violent end in which Joe not only shoots and kills Dorcas, but Violet disfigures her at her funeral.

It's a bizarre triangle with an even stranger resolution but none of the three characters are portrayed as long-suffering victims or a negative stereotypes. Instead they are fully developed. They may be self-centered and even violent and dangerous at times, but the reasons for their behaviors are clear. Like a good jazz song, the second verses explain their pasts and contribute to the first verse about the affair and it's graphic end.

Violet is probably the one who gets the Reader’s sympathy the most but even she has her issues. She is a 50ish married woman who settled into City life with a husband with whom she constantly argues and maintains a silent existence. She is capable of great compassion such as caring for her pet birds including one that says, “ I love you” and she bonds with many of her clients including developing a friendship peculiarly enough with Dorcas's aunt after her death.

However Violet also has difficulties in her past such as her mother's suicide and a troubled relationship with her grandmother whose stories of caring for her former white mistress and her mixed race son seek only to confuse Violet rather than uplift her.

Violet is deeply troubled and at times seems to verge on the edge of sanity.

The possibilities of mental illness comes into focus into Violet's adult life when she suffers three miscarriages and exhibits odd behavior like sitting in the street for hours on end, growing attached to her birds, and at one point contemplating kidnapping a child. Knowing about her past and her emerging psychological issues allows the Reader realize that her behavior was a long time coming and to learn that it was a matter of when not if she would attack and earn her nickname, “Violent.”

Joe's story is just as traumatic and just as understandable as his wife's. We learn that he was abandoned by his parents at a young age and he chose his surname Trace because his adopted parents told him that his birth parents disappeared “without a trace”. He figures that he was the “trace (his) parents left without.” When he finally meets the woman that he suspects may have given birth to him, this meeting provides neither comfort nor resolution as she is a disheveled mentally unstable recluse nicknamed “Wild.”

Joe spends most of his life feeling rootless and while he settles into married life with Violet, it is still fraught with problems. Besides the aforementioned miscarriages and years of silence, the two frequently moved until they were drawn to the allure of the City. (Never named but implied to be Harlem.)

The confusion and aimlessness of Joe's early life and continues into his adult life to the point where one of the first things that he does after meeting Dorcas is compare notes about their parentless past suggesting that Joe wasn't just looking for a lover, he was looking for a kindred spirit.

Dorcas is also brilliantly realized according to Morrison's excellent writing. She is the character who is most influenced by the music of the title and it shows. She begins as an innocent quiet daughter of two parents who were killed in a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois.

When she moves in with her Puritanical aunt, Alice, Dorcas longs to break free from her aunt's rigidity and gain some independence in her life. She and her new friend, Felice then sneak out to jazz clubs and enjoy the flapper lifestyle. It is at one of these clubs, where Dorcas meets Joe and their affair begins. Dorcas finds Joe's casual demeanor a sharp contrast to her excitable nature as a man who is smooth, kind, and can calm her down.

Dorcas is like many other young people in literature and culture and real life. She wants to experience a life of her own and all that comes with it. Her relationship with Joe brings her excitement but even she knows it won't last. (Hence why she gets involved with another man, Acton, before her death.)

Violet, Joe, and Dorcas's story is like many a sad song about love gone awry. Their paths seemed fated, the lives hard, and the end inevitable. But it is Toni Morrison's ability to capture her tritagonists that make this a song worth hearing again and again.

Lit List: Top Ten Literature for Black History Month

Lit List: Top Ten Literature For Black History Month
By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews

To honor Black History Month, I have compiled a list of the best literature to recommend for readers to celebrate the legacy of African-American authors and their protagonists many of whom questioned society's restrictions towards them based on class, gender, sexuality, and of course race. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes not so much. But they definitely got Reader's attention and got them talking.

Now for this list I have included one YA novel, one play, and 8 novels. There were some requirements. The most important was that they all had to be written by black authors. They also had to feature a black protagonist.  I have nothing against To Kill a Mockingbird or The Adventures of/ Huckleberry Finn. Both are wonderful books that deal with racial issues. However, they are both written by white authors and are told primarily through white characters. There is a huge difference between being an observer of such issues and being a participant and these books, I feel explore those internal struggles better than Mockingbird or Huckleberry do.

You will also noticed two books are left out, even though they are written by African-American women and are personal favorites of mine: The Color Purple  by Alice Walker and Beloved by Toni Morrison. Those are two of my all-time favorite novels and I highly recommend them, but I reviewed them quite a bit last year and wanted to read other works by Morrison and Walker. (Both have books that are on this list). However, I would be remiss if I did not recommend them to any potential Readers. If you never have, read them. They are brilliant books with strong female protagonists and deal with racial and gender themes in brilliant ways that explore the solidarity of women and community.

If you know of any others that I miss, please let me know here or on Facebook and as always spoilers may follow.

10. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

While Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a YA novel, it has as much to say about the struggles of African-Americans as books with protagonists twice the age of its 9 year old lead character, Cassie Logan.

The segregated Depression era Southern setting is stark, uncomfortable, and unfortunately very real. There are many moments throughout the book that take an unflinching look at the racism that the Logan family encounters, particularly in passages such as when a young white girl and her father throw Cassie on the road and make her call the girl "miss" after Cassie accidentally bumps into her.
Luckily, Cassie is written as a very strong-willed character and gets even with the girl in a very epic manner. There are also moments that show how demeaning the lives of many blacks in the South were such as their school being further from their home than the school for white children and that they have to use older dated textbooks much to their teacher/mother's dismay.

The violent passages such as showing a victim of being tarred and feathered and another who had been burned are disturbing and unforgettable. They show the true impact of racism and how it affects everyone that surrounds them. The ending is purposely left ambiguous as the racist climate will continue to effect the Logan family for generations to come.

9. Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
When people attend church services, they never know what goes on in the minds of their fellow church goers, the people who sit in the pews across from them, the choir members, even the pastor. James Baldwin takes an inside look into the minds of an African-American church going family and reveals that all is not sainted nor holy inside. This is a world that Baldwin knew a great deal about since he was the stepson of a Hell Fire and Brimstone pastor and the book is a semi-autobiographical account of his internal struggles between his religion and his homosexuality. The book is filled with religious imagery of Salvation and stories like that of Moses leading his people out of the wilderness (comparing African-Americans to stand against their white oppressors).

John Grimes is the stepson of Rev. Gabriel Grimes, pastor of the storefront Pentecostal Temple of the Fire Baptized. He listens to his stepfather's sermon with a mixture of hatred for his stepfather's abusive nature and desire to win his affections.  As the short novel continues, we get not only into John's thoughts but those of his stepfather, mother, and aunt.

Each person in his family is revealed to have a secret that they do not reveal to anyone but themselves which the Narration implies are their sins that they have kept concealed. John's mother, Elizabeth still mourns the loss of his birth father, Richard who killed himself before John was born and married Gabriel more for protection and security than any love. Gabriel, himself, is filled with judgment over his family, parishioners, and the world around him. (He beats his younger son with a belt after the boy had been stabbed.) However he recalls his late first wife, Deborah and mistress, Esther with whom he fathered a child. Gabriel's sister, Florence, also knows about Esther and the child and has been keeping a letter as proof to reveal to Gabriel when the "time is right." In telling the stories of the three Grimes adults and their pasts, Baldwin dares the Readers to see them as deeply flawed human beings who alternate between wanting God's love and fearing God's wrath because of their secrets.

John himself goes through and awakening that is equally spiritual and sexual. He believes that he is filled with the Holy Spirit and sees images of God in some beautiful evocative description. However he is filled with an earthly desire for a fellow male parishioner, Elisha. The inner spiritual warfare between John's quest for religions salvation and his homosexual desire is deeply felt as he feels he cannot come to terms with both, The ending is left purposely ambiguous over which side John chooses. (Though since he is based on Baldwin who wrote other books about his sexuality and criticisms of religion, indicates this is the way John will choose as well.)

8. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

The title of Lorraine Hansberry's moving Tony nominated  play comes from a line in Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem (Dream Deferred)" asking "What happens to a dream deferred/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" Her play shows the effects of a dream deferred on an African-American family as they receive their husband and father's life insurance policy.

Each one has different ideas on what to do with it. For Walter Lee Younger, this means he can open up a liquor store with his street-smart friends. For his younger sister, Beneatha, she can continue her education in medical school. Their mother, Lena, wants to buy a house in a white neighborhood.

The conflicts within the family are realistic and tense as the Youngers find their individual paths with the money. Walter Lee's friends abscond with the money leaving him a broken man. Beneatha is torn between two completely different men, one an educated snob and the other who encourages her to embrace her African heritage.
In one memorable scene, a white member of the housing committee visits the Youngers to offer them money not to move to the neighborhood "for their own good and safety" only to receive the brush off by Lena. Walter Lee vows to be a better man by saying that the Youngers are proud of who they are and will be good neighbors. This final scene shows that the Youngers don't know whether they will face racism and tension in their new neighborhood but they will face it together.

7. The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

Naylor's novel told in seven short stories tells of the relationships between seven African-American women and how they try to aid each other.

The women are originally written and stand out in their stories. There's Mattie Michael, who acts as den mother to the other women but has her own history of worrying about a son who is on the run from the law. Etta Mae Johnson is an older but feisty woman who doesn't mind dating men half her age. Kiswana Browne, a young woman from a wealthy family who embraces the "Back to Africa" movement and the lower class Brewster Place much to her mother's dismay. Luciella Louise Turner wants to keep her no-good boyfriend in her life to the point of injuring herself. Cora Lee is a single mother of a mob of unruly children who could learn some discipline (and so could she). Lorraine and Therese are a lesbian couple who move to Brewster Place to seek acceptance but instead get the worst kind of bigotry possible. In their stories, Naylor characterizes each woman with her strengths, frailties, and individuality making them fascinating characters.

Besides their individuality, Naylor also explores their connections to each other and how each woman reaches out to the others for friendship, understanding, and maybe a chance to change her life for the better. When Mattie is on the run from her abusive father, she is taken in by Luciella's grandmother. Mattie then returns the favor by helping Luciella through her crises with her boyfriend. Etta Mae stands up for Lorraine and Therese when a nosey neighbor judges them in a meeting. Kiswana invites Cora Lee's children to a street performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream which inspires one of the kids to become a writer.

The connections bring the women together as a whole. This is particularly meaningful in the final chapters when it is revealed that the characters moved on and Brewster Place got swallowed up and gerrymandered into other names. Even though Brewster Place is gone, Naylor's characters still have their memories of community.

6. Native Son by Richard Wright

Bigger Thomas is one of many protagonists like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov: a protagonist who commits murder but instead of judging or censoring him, the writing goes into the societal implications. What causes a man like Raskolnikov or Bigger Thomas to commit a crime? In the case of Bigger, his author Richard Wright asks the question of how much race plays a part in Bigger's crime, his cover up of the crime, his arrest, and trial.

Until he accidentally murders wealthy white Mary Dalton, Bigger could never articulate what he feels. He feels isolated because of the prejudice from white society and trapped by the needs of his impoverished family. He works as a chauffeur for the Dalton family but feels condescended and mocked by their acts of kindness particularly from Mary who is an active member of the Communist party with her boyfriend, Jan. Since he had never felt anything but fear, hatred, and derision from white people, he feels the same for them. He acts subservient and says "yesum", taking them wherever they want, while gritting his teeth inside. One night after a drunken encounter with Mary and Jan, Bigger brings Mary upstairs and accidentally suffocates her.

The passages following the murder are Poe-esque as Bigger recruits his girlfriend, Bessie, to write a ransom note signed by the local Communist party in an attempt to frame Jan for the murder. It is spine-tingling and somewhat gruesomely entertaining as Bigger plays on the white characters' prejudices by feigning ignorance so they would believe that he was not clever enough to commit the murder. He feels confident enough to stay ahead of the police until he is unable to collect the ransom money to leave town and he kills Bessie in another moment of panic eventually leading to his pursuit and capture. (In pages that are all-too-real in these days of media exploitation of crimes particularly ones that fall in "Missing White Woman Syndrome" categories, Bigger is charged for Mary's death  but very little mention is made towards Bessie's.)

The final third of Native Son deals with Bigger's trial and the words of his defense attorney, Boris Max who lays out the themes for the jury and the Reader to learn. While Max's speech is long, it is gripping as it challenges that Bigger's fear and hatred towards white people, and accidental murder of Mary was a learned trait: brought on by white society's fear and hatred of him. The writing suggests that Bigger Thomas was not born, he was made. That we all created Bigger Thomas and all of the Bigger Thomases before and since.

5. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man is a deeply analytical and thought-provoking novel about an unnamed African-American man who must face his metaphoric invisibility as a victim of racism, social conflict, and the judgments and prejudices of others.

From the unforgettable first chapter where the Narrator is made to participate in a grueling Battle Royale for the amusement of white patrons, he discovers that he is used and betrayed by the people around him. It's heartbreaking as he goes throughout his life manipulated and made a fool of by people around him. Even when he obtains some success such as at an all-black college, eventually his happiness collapses such as when he is expelled after taking one of the founders on a detour of the seedier side of town (thought it was at the request of the founder and not his idea).

The Narrator spends a great deal of time with a group known as the Brotherhood, an organization that seems a composite of socialist/anarchists. He gains some success as a spokesperson on their behalf in Harlem. But disillusionment sets in when another African-American member of the Brotherhood is shot while trying to resist arrest and the Narrator makes a stirring speech on the rights of African-Americans (much to the Brotherhood's objection). Disillusionment turns to hatred when riots start in Harlem and the Narrator realizes that was the Brotherhood's plan all along.

The strongest statement in the book is made when the Invisible Man decides to no longer be invisible, to speak and fight for himself. He ends the book provocatively by daring the Reader to confront their own invisibility by saying "Who knows but that on the lower frequencies, I speak for you."

4. Kindred by Octavia Butler

You can never know what the past is like unless you've actually been there. Edana "Dana" Franklin learns that lesson as she travels back and forth between her 1976 home with her Caucasian husband, Kevin and the antebellum South where she is mistaken and treated like a slave.

Dana suffers frequent dizzy spells and when she recovers from them, she finds herself in the presence of Rufus Weylin, the son of a plantation owner and is later revealed to be Dana's ancestor. Each time that Dana arrives, it is to help Rufus out of some difficulty. Once it is to save him from drowning, another time, she finds him drunk in an alley and so on. The multiple times of saving Rufus' life does not endear her in the eyes of his parents who have her whipped, and especially Rufus' father who gives Dana very uncomfortable stares. She also encounters Rufus' future mistress, a free black woman, Alice whom Dana is determined to protect until she gives birth to Alice and Rufus' daughter, Hagar.

Dana is a very well developed character as she goes from the past to the present and her interactions with others. Her relationship with Rufus for example is one of concern mixed with hatred. He alternates between needing Dana as a mother figure and seeing her as property. She is also held under suspicion by the black characters particularly Alice, who at first refused to be Rufus' concubine and instead wants to run away with her husband. Alice's husband, Isaac is beaten and sold sending Alice reluctantly into Rufus' protection. Then there's Kevin, Dana's modern-day husband who at first is very condescending not believing her time travel stories until he encounters them himself.

One of the themes that plays into the narrative is the idea of home. The further Dana goes in time, the longer she stays there. In the first chapter, she is only in the past for a few hours and returns after a few seconds. Later she spends months in the past and is gone for hours. The longest time between the past and present belongs not to Dana, but to her husband Kevin. Even though he's gone for eight days (and can only return when Dana goes back to the past to retrieve him), for Kevin he has been in the past for five years: long enough for him to travel to the North and become an abolitionist/teacher. Each time Kevin and Dana return to the present, they have momentary culture shock from the modern conveniences and question their lives in the present and their marriage. (Dana worries that with Kevin in the past, his thoughts may conform to those of the white men he encounters. When he returns at first she's skeptical with whether he became an abolitionist, which he tells her of course he did.) When they travel between time, they aren't sure where their home actually is and still suffer from the memories of the past. This is revealed in the end when Dana is injured in the past and the injury carries over to her return. A part of her will always be in the past scarred by her experience as a slave.

3. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston's brilliant short novel is about a woman who discovers herself and her own strength from her marriages to three different men.

Janie Crawford begins life unsure of herself even her own skin (She recalls having a picture taken with white children and confused that she couldn't see herself not knowing that she was different from the other children inspiring their mockery at her naivete). As Janie grows that insecurity manifests in her relationships with men as her grandmother arranges her first marriage to an older man, Logan Killick.

Janie's marriage to Logan doesn't last long as she's tired of being a drudge and playing second fiddle to Logan's late first wife. She divorces him and marries Jody Starks, a charming drifter who becomes mayor of a small town. At first her life as First Lady of Jody's town of Green Cove Springs is pleasant, but Jody verbally abuses her and forces the townspeople to do hard physical labor. Janie endures her unhappy marriage for 20 years until as Jody is dying she curses him with all the hurt he gave her over the years.

At age 40, Janie marries her third husband Vergible Woods AKA Tea Cake, a much younger man. Recognizing her own sexual desires, Janie elopes with Tea Cake to the Everglades. It is in her marriage to Tea Cake that Janie is able to find the strength to stand up as an independent woman and no longer take the abuse that the men in her life have given her.

2. Sula by Toni Morrison

Sula tells the story of two women who on the surface appear to be polar opposites, but they are revealed to be very similar.
Nel and Sula grow up in the town of Bottom, Ohio and have very different backgrounds. Nel's family is very rigid conservative home that is only livened by her occasional visits to her maternal grandmother, Rochelle, a prostitute. Sula lives in a boarding house with her mother and grandmother neither of which were married when they had their children and a regular stream of male boarders including three men they call "the deweys."

As they age, their paths continue to diverge as Nel marries young and has children and Sula leaves town only to return with a bad reputation of having many men. Nel welcomes her friend-that is until Sula runs off with her husband causing Nel to reevaluate her friendship with Sula.

At first Sula seems like the bad girl and Nel seems like the good girl, but Morrison's excellent writing makes their lines not so defined. This is exemplified in a passage in which Sula accidentally kills a neighbor boy. While Nel blames Sula solely for the tragedy, Sula's elderly grandmother reminds Nel that she watched it happen and did nothing to stop it nor did she tell anyone about it, so Nel was just as much to blame as Sula. Nel also realizes that she was as much to blame in the decline of her marriage as Sula. Morrison shows that there is bad and good within everyone and sometimes those who pass judgment on those who do wrong are just as capable of it themselves.

1. The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

We carry our personal history and the history of our people with us is the main theme of Alice Walker's multi-narrative epic novel The Temple of My Familiar. This novel tells the story of a group of people who are interwoven by their current links to each other and their past histories which tell of many generations of oppression, conflict, struggles, and migration.

The Temple of My Familiar has a large cast many of whom are connected in unusual ways. There is Carlotta, a beautiful Latin American woman whose flamboyant rocker husband, Arveyda ran off with her mother, Zede. Carlotta is also having an affair with Suwelo, a college professor who is in a troubled marriage with his wife, Fanny whose grandmother is none other than Celie, the protagonist of Walker's The Color Purple (I couldn't get too far away from this book.) Suwelo becomes close friends with an older couple, Hal and Miss Lissie who give him information not only about his past but the history of his people.

Each of the characters relates their stories in various chapters. There is no fluid plot so much as it is a series of interconnected stories about each person's past and their heritage. Zede's story for example tells of her history of fleeing a tempestuous political climate to America and then her return to rediscover her roots as well as her artistry in "sewing magic" which she inherited. While she tells her story, Arveyda also recounts his troubled relationship with his parents and his own questions towards his lineage particularly his fascination with his Native American roots. Fanny and her mother, Olivia tell of their relationship with Celie and Olivia's "other mother", Shug Avery that had been built on the former's abuse from her husband. (A horrible incident between Celie and a dog suggests that the abuse may not have been as far from Celie's mind as she thought).

By far the most interesting storyteller is the most fascinating character in the bunch: Miss Lissie. Lissie possesses an almost goddess-like presence as she recalls all of her former lives with a strong recall that goes beyond time and place. She captivates Suwelo, and The Reader with her memories of the distant past of her lives-mostly as black women, but sometimes as white men, and once as a lioness with aplomb. She recalls her past life in pre-historic Africa during the creation of fire all the way to slavery times mirroring the experiences of the African people and their eventual connections to America. They are particularly strong in their spiritual feelings of the early Goddess worship and the concept of a Mother Land.
Lissie compares the early idyllic life of a matriarchal society that worshiped a Goddess and its transformation to a war-like patriarchal society to a monster. This comparison is made stronger when she compares slavery to a Gorgon (Medusa) and the rebellion of the slaves against their masters as the fury of a dark vengeance seeking Goddess. This comparison implies the Goddess who had been turned over has finally sought her revenge against those who overpowered her and that she will always protect her children no matter where they are.
Lissie's memories inspire Suwelo to look at his life more closely and to reconcile with Fanny causing further reconciliations between Carlotta, Arveyda, and Zede. As Walker's characters learn from their pasts, they form a circle that connects them to a shared history not only theirs but a shared history of all people.

Honorable Mention:

Novels: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Dear America: I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, A Freed Girl by Joyce Hanson, Bud, Not Buddy and The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, White Teeth and Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Non-Fiction: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, And Arn't I A Woman by Sojourner Truth, The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, Letter From Birmingham Jail, I Have a Dream, and Other Writings by Martin Luther King Jr., On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madame C.J. Walker by A'leila Bundles, Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of The Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterley, Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges, We Were 8 Years in Poweer by Na-Hishi Coates, Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Plays: Fences and The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, for colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Notzake Shange, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith, The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe

Poems and Short Story Authors: Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Maya Angelou, bell hooks, Rita Dove, Dudley Randall, Elizabeth Alexander, June Jordan, Quincy Troupe, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde