Tar Baby (novel)
LC Class PS3563.O8749 T37 1981 | | |
| Preceded by | Song of Solomon | |
|---|---|---|
| Followed by | Beloved | |
Tar Baby is a 1981 novel by the American author Toni Morrison, her fourth to be published.
Plot introduction
This novel portrays a love affair between Jadine and Son, two
Title
Tar Babyis also a name [...] that white people call black children, black girls, as I recall.
At one time, a tar pit was a holy place, at least an important place, because tar was used to build things.
It held together things like Moses' little boat and the pyramids.
For me, the tar baby came to mean the black woman who can hold things together.— interview with Morrison by Karin L. Badt (1995)
Reception
Kirkus Reviews in March 1981 stated: "Morrison's fine-tuned, high-strung characters this time—black and white Americans caught up together in a "wide and breezy" house on a Caribbean island—may lack the psychic wingspread of Sula or Milkman of Song of Solomon. Yet within the swift of her dazzlingly mythic/animistic fancies, and dialogue sharp as drum raps, they carry her speculations—about black and white relationships and black female identity—as lightly as racing silks. ... Scouring contemporary insights—in prose as lithe and potent as vines in a rain forest."[1]
In The New York Times, novelist John Irving wrote of Tar Baby: "...Toni Morrison's greatest accomplishment is that she has raised her novel above the social realism that too many black novels and women's novels are trapped in. She has succeeded in writing about race and women symbolically."[2]
References
- ^ "Tar Baby". Kirkus. March 1, 1981. Retrieved July 19, 2021.
- ^ John Irving, "Morrison's Black Fable", The New York Times (Books), March 29, 1981.
External links
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