The canon of “womanist” fiction: the works of Tony Morrison and Alice Walker

Feminism is the movement forthe full social, political and economic equality of men and women.

Womanist and womanism are populist and poetic synonyms for black feminist and black feminism. They were coined in 1983 by Alice Walker -- African American novelist, poet, essayist, and activist -- in her collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose.

Womanism brings a racialized and often class-located experience to the gendered experience suggested by feminism. It also reflects a link with history that includes African cultural heritage, enslavement, women's culture, and a kinship with other women, especially women of color.

In 1993, The American Heritage Dictionary included this new usage, and defined womanist as: “Having or expressing a belief in or respect for women and their talents and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class; exhibiting a feminism that is inclusive esp. of Black American culture”.

Toni Morrison (b. February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio) is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 for her collected works. Several of her novels have taken their place in the canon of American literature, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), and Song of Solomon. Morrison's writings are notable for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters. In recent years, Morrison has published a number of children's books with her son, Slade Morrison.

Morrison was born as Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read constantly (among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy). Morrison's father, George Wofford, a welder by trade, told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings).

In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University to study humanities. While there she changed her name from "Chloe" to "Toni", explaining that people found "Chloe" too difficult to pronounce. Her name "Toni" derives from her middle name, Anthony. Morrison received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953, then earned a Master of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1955. Oxford University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in June 2005.

After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (from 1955-57) then returned to Howard to teach English. In 1958 she married Harold Morrison. They had two children and divorced in 1964. After the divorce she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. Eighteen months later she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House.

As an editor, Morrison played an important role in bringing African American literature into the mainstream. She edited books by such black authors as Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis and Gayl Jones. She also taught English at two branches of the State University of New York. In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the University at Albany, The State University of New York. From 1989 to 2006 Morrison held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Though based in the Creative Writing Program, Morrison did not regularly offer writing workshops to students after the late 1990s, a fact that earned her some criticism. Rather, she has conceived and developed the prestigious Princeton Atelier, a program that brings together talented students with critically acclaimed, world-famous artists. Together the students and the artists produce works of art that are presented to the public after a semester of collaboration. In her position at Princeton, Morrison used her insights to encourage not merely new and emerging writers, but artists working to develop new forms of art through interdisciplinary play and cooperation.

The Bluest Eye (1970)

Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, while raising two children and teaching at Howard University. The novel's protagonist is Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who prays each night to become a blue-eyed beauty like Shirley Temple. Breedlove's family has numerous problems and she believes everything would be okay if only she had beautiful blue eyes. Through the course of the novel, the narrator, Claudia MacTeer, describes the destruction of Pecola's life. The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio, the town in which Morrison grew up. The novel is controversial not only in its subject matter, but also in its structure. In it, Morrison rejects a chronological structure and a single narrator, as she does in many of her works, in favour of a splintered and multifaceted approach.

Sula (1973)

Sula depicts two black woman friends and their community of Medallion, Ohio. It follows the lives of Sula, considered a threat against the community, and her cherished friend Nel, from their childhood to maturity and to death. The novel was nominated for the National Book Award.

Song of Solomon (1977)

Morrison's third novel, Song of Solomon, brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club (the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1940). A family chronicle similar to Alex Haley's Roots, the novel follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, a black man living in Mercy, a city somewhere in Michigan, from birth to adulthood. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Tar Baby (1981)

Tar Baby takes place at the Caribbean mansion of a white millionaire Valerian Street and focuses on the themes of racial identity, sexuality, class, and family dynamics.

Beloved (1987)

Beloved is loosely based on the life and legal case of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her child to prevent the child from being taken into slavery. The book's central figure is Sethe, an escaped slave who murdered her two-year-old daughter, referred to as Beloved, to save her from a life of slavery. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award, a number of writers protested the omission. Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film Beloved starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the opera of the same name. In May 2006, The New York Times "Book Review" named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty five years.

Jazz (1992)

A haunting and lyrical book, Jazz uses an innovative narrative technique to echo the improvisational character of the eponymous musical form. It focuses on the story of an aging couple and the loss of love they experience.

Paradise (1998)

Paradise was the first novel released by Morrison following her receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Surprisingly little has been written or spoken about it in response, as the manner in which the book covers various socio-political issues is so unprecedented; literary and other critics have yet to address its message and meaning. Paradise details the history and the social upheaval that affects a small, proud all-black town from its creation, told through chapters named for each of the female protagonists. The story takes the reader through history and into the sexual and social revolutions of the mid-20th century. Morrison scholars and critics have referred to Paradise, Beloved, and Jazz as Morrison's "trilogy" because of some similarities that exist between subject matter, female protagonists, and writing style, but Morrison herself has not defined these novels as a group.

Love (2003)

Love is the story of Bill Cosey, a charismatic but dead hotel owner. Or rather, it is about the people around him, all affected by his life — even long after his death. The main characters are Christine, his granddaughter and Heed, his widow. The two are the same age and used to be friends but some forty years after Cosey's death they are sworn enemies, and yet share his mansion. Again Morrison used split narrative and jumps back and forth throughout the story, not fully unfolding until the very end.

Similar to the concept of communication between the living and the dead in Beloved, Morrison introduced a character named Junior; she was the medium to connect the dead Bill Cosey to the world of the living.

Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an African-American author and feminist who received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for The Color Purple.

Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, United States; as well as being African American, her family has Cherokee, Scottish and Irish lineage. Not many people know about the real reason for Walker having glasses. When she was eight years old, she was playing with her brothers at her house. They accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB pellet. Over time, the injury calcified and transformed into a white scar. Walker hated how this affected her appearance and how she was ridiculed for it. After high school, Walker attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated in 1965 from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers (Bronxville postal zone), New York. During her junior year, she spent a summer as an exchange student in Uganda. Also, during her college education, she realized she was pregnant and was devastated. She thought she would be a disgrace to her parents. She got so upset, she contemplated suicide. One of her friends found a doctor who gave Walker an abortion.

Walker's writings include novels, stories, essays and poems.

Typically, they focus on the struggles of African Americans, particularly women, and they witness against societies that are racist, sexist, and violent. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle. She is an open bisexual, and sympathetic of people of all sexualities, ethnicities, and races. Her first book of poetry was written while she was still a senior at Sarah Lawrence. She took a brief sabbatical from writing when she was in Mississippi and worked in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Walker resumed her writing career when she joined Ms. Magazine. An article she published in 1975 was largely responsible for the renewal of interest in the work of Zora Neale Hurston. (In 1973, Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered Hurston's unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, FL. Both women paid for a modest headstone for the gravesite.)

In addition to her collected short stories and poetry, Walker's first work of fiction, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's second novel, Meridian, was published. The novel dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil rights movement, and closely paralleled some of Walker's own experiences.

In 1982, Walker would publish what has become her best-known work, the novel The Color Purple. The story of a young black woman fighting her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchal black culture was a resounding commercial success, and the immediacy of the characters and the story struck a nerve in readers, regardless of race, age, or gender. The book became a best seller, and was subsequently made into a 1985 movie as well as a 2005 Broadway musical play.

Walker wrote several other novels, including The Temple of My Familiar and Possessing The Secret of Joy (which featured, among other protagonists, characters or descendants of characters from The Color Purple) and has published a number of collections of short stories, poetry, and other published work.

Walker married a Jewish man, Mel Leventhal. They were the first legally married inter-racial couple in segregated Mississippi. They had a daughter, Rebecca, and are now divorced.

Major works: In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973); Meridian (1976); The Color Purple (1982)

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