Jazz
CBC Books | | Posted: February 1, 2018 4:52 PM | Last Updated: October 26, 2020
Toni Morrison
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse.
This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life. (From Vintage)
Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she received in 1993. Her novel Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988. Morrison's writing explored the dynamic between society and the individual from a Black American perspective, bringing to light the cruel legacy of slavery. She died on Aug. 5, 2019 at the age of 88.
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