Toni Morrison and womanist discourse

Alexis De Veaux

Aoi Mori's Toni Morrison and Womanist Discourse is an illuminating scholarly achievement, which both positions and recognizes African-American women's everyday and theoretical knowledge as primary lenses through which to analyze Ms. Morrison's extraordinary works. As such, Mori's book will have resonance for scholars of African-American letters, American letters, and black women's history.

William C. Fischer

Professor Mori comes to Morrison's works from the distant and distinct vantage point of her own Japanese culture, making her incursions into Morrison's representations of African-American culture, and, in particular, into Morrison's highly defined positioning of women in that culture, creative and acute. She brings an original coherence to the whole of Morrison's writings, from The Bluest Eye to Jazz, lucidly revealing the female-gendered evolution of Morrison's cultural and emotional themes. Throughout, Mori carefully grounds her readings in the large body of works by African-American women writers so significantly visible on the American literary scene.

Booknews

After setting out and elaborating the notion Alice Walker defined as a potential inclusive female autonomy that transcends the race, sex, and sexual preferences that feminism seems not to, Mori (English, Hiroshima Jogakuin U., Japan) discusses Morrison's work, especially as it relates to such categories and movement. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)