Word: morrisonism
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...hard they try to escape its grips. Their pain comes from their alienation, from never being considered anything but Black in a country like America, and the pain impels them to clutch hungrily at the spirits of Black folklore that live in their dreams, their songs and their stories. Morrison does not make Black life a retreat or an imposed exile from white society; it exists as a mystic world where the present is infused with the frightening richness of the past. Sometimes the past speaks so loudly to these characters that it drowns out their connections to the present...
...ghosts agitated her with visions of a softer feminity than the one she seemed destined to live, while at the same time they haunted her rapist father with clues to her extreme pathos. From this story, and from Sula, where ghosts exist but are still subordinated by present reality, Morrison leaped to a world where spirits have full control over reality in the mythical novel Song of Solomon...
...Baby, Morrison's latest novel, makes interesting use of time, alternately erasing, alternately accentuating the poignancy of the characters' lives. On one level Tar Baby appears self-conscious, as when Morrison's efforts to bring the theme of alienation to a new height fail and her characters are left in affected poses, muttering cliches. But the softness of Morrison's prose when she describes the dreams of her characters, plus her sensitivity to the historical traditions that created Black America, save the novel from total affectation. The symbols which Black Americans use to interpret much of their lives...
...blinded slaves populate the folklore of Isle des Chevaliers alongside other tales of horsemen and moaning women who wander through the forest. Morrison echoes the whispers of centuries-old legends in her phrases, animating the landscape and infusing each piece of nature with a soul...
JADINE has feelings, though, and a deep sense of womanhood which is Morrison's gift. She hardly looks or acts the way Black people expect her to, but she feels the force of their folklore and their spirit. An African woman she sees in a Paris supermarket, with "eyes so beautiful they burned the lashes around them," haunts Jadine for months when she spits at her with disdain. The spirits of the past strike hardest with the discovery of an untamed, uneducated filthy young man named Son who has been hiding in the Street's house for days. At first...