I.Academic Acceptance of Morrison’s Works

In the review of The Black Book (edited by Toni Morrison), Mobley proposes the statement that Morrison’s involvement in the book project is actually originated from her fear over a “kind of historical erasure of denial of those aspects of the past which could not be easily assimilated into its rhetorical discourse or into the collective consciousness of black people as a group”. [3] Morrison questions what she perceives to be a romanticization of both the African past and the American past which is so threatening that it would devalue 300 years of black life on the American soil before its being fully recorded, examined or understood as far as its complexity and significance are concerned.

In the preface of the volume Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, Henry Louis Gates also states that the themes adopted by Morrison’s work “are often those expected of naturalist fiction—the burdens of history, the determining social effects of race, gender, or class.” [4] This study develops one step further by pointing out that “the burden of history” refers to the racial memories locating on the body. It is actually these memories that direct the characters to accept their past and be responsible for their future.

Either accepting one’s past or taking the responsibility of the future has a close relationship with remembering the ancestry. Many critics hold the view that the importance of ancestry is regarded as a key element in Morrison’s works. According to the analysis on Morrison, Terese Higgins suggests, “one’s ancestors do not cease to be part of one’s community once they cross over into the world of the dead,” and “ancestors help people live as they should; they remind them of their duties to one another.” [5] In addition, the vision of duty parallels Mobley’s assertion that Morrison “serves a cultural function meant to validate people and places that have been devalued and to offer cultural affirmation of these people and places as a prescription for healing and transforming.” [6] Apart from that, Mobley further suggests that “Morrison sees a usable past that she can consciously draw on to affirm the existential quest of the self as well as to affirm those folk processes that give coherence to black people as a collective entity or community.” [7] Actually, this study is carried out to delve further into the idea that the recognition and acceptance of the past and one’s ancestry are of vital significance to the transformation of individual and community.

As witnesses, both history and ancestry also play important parts in Morrison’s novels. In The Voices of Toni Morrison, Barbara Hill Rigney argues, “Morrison reinscribes a history that is less individual than racial and national,” and when the history becomes “racial and national, it becomes a witness for those who come after.” [8] Susan Willis has a similar opinion on the singular importance of the past and lays emphasis on the fact that “neither Morrison’s use of metaphor, nor her general drive to return to origins is rooted in nostalgia for the past. The metaphoric rendition of past experience represents a process for coming to grips with historical transition”. [9] It is suggested by this study that Morrison’s employment of the past functions as a call to preserving what has been ignored, forgotten, and left behind instead of being nostalgic.

Despite the fact that Morrison follows closely the development of the Civil Rights Movement, she does not get involved in relevant protests or marches herself. Instead, she attaches more importance to maintaining the unique vitality of the black communities in the process of experiencing integration. As what is stated by Linden Peach, Morrison’s “black community is envisaged as existing like a cell within the larger white body of America, sustained by tradition strengths and values but being weakened by divisions within it.” [10] This study states that the connections to the community lay emphasis on the significance of keeping history, memory, and community together. Moreover, the protagonist gets rid of sin or transgression by stepping beyond them and accepting the guidance from other characters in the community. It is quite evident that reaching out to give or receive help is deemed as a necessary step for healing, empowering each other, as well as nourishing the community.

When it comes to nourishing the communities and sustaining African American culture, the role played by motherhood is of vital importance in Morrison’s novels. As what is stated by Lois C. Rosen, “Motherhood, in one form or another, is central to all her novels. She is able to take historically and culturally African American interpretations of maternity and strip away the socially imposed limitation on that motherhood, thereby exposing the universal humanity of that experience. In so doing, she dissolves the boundaries of the maternal role, creating an ever-widening, intergenerational definition of the concept of mothering”. [11] Andrea O’Reilly also argues in Toni Morrison and Motherhood: A Politics of the Heart (2004) that Morrison defines motherhood “as a site of power for black women”. [12] This study proposes to extend “motherhood as a site of power” by the view that motherhood, among female characters, can be adopted to establish bonds or ties through the recognition to each other’s scarred body which has been left under the severe influence of historical and cultural trauma.

As far as the historical and cultural trauma is concerned, recent works by Evelyn Jaffe, Keith Byerman, J. Brooks Bouson, Jill Matus, and Lucille P. Fultz focus on Morrison’s telling of stories related to historical and cultural trauma, as well as the connection of trauma to shame and racial difference.[13] Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber gives detailed illustration to, in Race, Trauma and Home (2009), the concepts of “home”, and further states that whether a physical place, community or relationship, it is reconstructed through memory to provide a positive self and serve as a healing space for the characters created by Morrison. Remembering and retelling trauma within a supportive community enables the victims of trauma to move forward and then obtain a meaningful subjectivity and selfhood. Schreiber also conducts analysis on the lasting effects of slavery depicted in Morrison’s works and takes into account the almost insurmountable task of recovering from trauma and pursuing the acquisition of subjectivity. This study believes that the body is the holder for trauma initiated by physical abuse, discrimination, exclusion, dehumanization, or abandonment, and in the meanwhile, the body is also regarded as the site, the tool, and the product of resistance and empowerment. The researcher holds the firm belief that the body in Morrison’s novels offers the potential functions for recognition, sisterhood, healing, and resistance.

Considering the fact that the trauma of slavery can never truly disappear, Schreiber argues that memories that are able to reconstruct a positive self, whether created by people, relationship, physical place, or concept, help characters in Morrison’s novels to form its own subjectivity. Jill Matus gives depiction over Morrison’s novel as “a form of cultural memory” and shows “how, in their engagement with the African American past, they testify to historical trauma.” [14] This study states that cultural memory, both in the written and oral forms, helps constitute a healthy mould of mourning, which can help the relevant character to reconstruct a positive self. However, it is the racial memories that haunt Morrison’s characters. In Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison (2013), Melanie R. Anderson points out that Morrison connects her novels not only through cultural history but also by adopting preoccupation with spectrality and the haunting, which are deemed as the disjointed natures of both personal and cultural history. The specter “provides connection and identity to confused and, subsequently, ‘ghosted’ characters. Ghosts create places for memorializing and healing”.[15] The researcher believes that these “ghosted characters” are actually racial memories, which would continue to haunt the present life of the character. Racial memory is generally regarded as a collective memory of a negative memory that remains nonverbalized yet somehow transfers itself from one generation to another, and it would haunt all the time.