AML 4604 - Summer A 2026 - Okonkwo

This course focuses on Toni Morrison (1931-2019). A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, and the first African American writer, indeed the first black woman, to win the Nobel Prize for literature, among other honors, Morrison is a creative genius, intellectual luminary, and cultural icon that needs little or no introduction to readers worldwide, particularly English majors. In this class, we will study her first six novels, chronologically: The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1992). We will also examine her short story “Recitatif” and her Nobel Lecture. To help deepen our appreciation of Morrison’s world, politics, and art, we will place her canon in a nexus of contexts and traditions: African American, African, American, and African Caribbean. Students are encouraged to visit the Toni Morrison Society webpage for biographical, programmatic, and archival information.