The Black Community Portrayal in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973) and Song of Solomon (1977)

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating Toni Morrison’s endeavor to locate the black community’s actions in three of her novels: The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), and Song of Solomon (1977). Toni Morrison’s novels have particularly depicted the black community from a specific perspective, the one that is largely defined and shared by the dominant white society and its standards. The Bluest Eye sets in Morrison’s hometown, Lorain, Ohio. In this novel, the black community in Lorain is separated from the upper-class white community, also known as Lake Shore Park, a place where blacks are not permitted. As for Sula the setting is a small town in Ohio, located on a hillside known as “Bottom”. Song of Solomon plunges the reader into the absorbing black community, a standalone entity, but yet never far removed from the white world. The first pages of the novel describe “Not Doctor Street” and “No Mercy Hospital”. These names are used within the African- American community but are unofficial and not recognized by the white city rulers who instead identify them as Mains Avenue and Mercy Hospital. In short, the setting for Song of Solomon is an anonymous city in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The study has revealed that there always exists a white community bordering the black community as its standard and a machine to repress and exploit its people. This parallel which is actually a quest for identity is omnipresent in Morrison’s novels surely because she is an African American writer.