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Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison's (Hi)Stories and Truths (FORECAAST)

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Justine Tally's richly textured analysis of Toni Morrison's Paradise (1998) offers to both specialists in literary studies and scholars from other disciplines a clear and highly insightful introduction to that most complicated of Morrison's texts. Paradise Reconsidered: Toni Morrison's (Hi)stories and Truths places the novel within the larger context of Morrison's concerns with language and narrative strategy as well her wide reading in African American history and lore. Indeed, as Tally makes clear, Paradise constitutes the final part of a trilogy: "Whereas Beloved [1987] focuses on the role of memory, and Jazz [1991] is centered around the development of story, Paradise is devoted to the cultural production of History/history and its unstable relationship to both memory and story." (p. 14)

Tally's impressive survey of text and context provides a brief but illuminating account of the publishing history of the Morrison trilogy. Additionally, it looks at the novels in light of the author's literary, social and cultural criticism, especially Morrison's challenge to the what has been considered canonical in U. S. literature found in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). The analysis of the text itself elaborates on themes presented by other literary theorists. Tally draws upon theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Walter Ong, and at the same time addresses the questions raised by African American scholars such as Trudier Harris and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. But it is her own reading of the text and its meanings that stand out. She qualifies, or modifies, the notion of "magic realism," using Morrison's own objections as well as her own understanding of the theme and ultimately offers the phrase "psychic realism" as a more precise alternative. Tally goes through the vast number of characters in Paradise and nicely unravels the complicated web of relationships, plot turns, and narrative strategies that make Morrison's text difficult as well as exciting. Tally also gives us clues about some matters that Morrison leaves ambiguous or unexplained. Who among the occupants in the convent was the lone white girl? How do we understand the 'reappearances' of characters that we had thought were killed?

Tally highlights issues of gender and color in Morrison's texts, carefully assessing Paradise from its key first sentence, "They shoot the white girl first," through the layered stories of the women in the Convent and the population of Ruby, Oklahoma. The founding of the town by "8-rock" black families(the reference is to a mining term and the color of coal) is central to the text, but so is the subtly changing historical interpretation of the town's origins, as perceived by various newcomers. In attending to changing beliefs across generations, from the Reconstruction era to the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Tally also provides a chronological guide--as Morrison seems to do--to shifting modes of race-consciousness among African Americans. This is accomplished both through minute readings of the text and through expansive sections, such as those concerning Religious Ideology as Narrative Strategy and the meanings of feminism and racial "essentialism" in Morrison's novels.

The interdisciplinary nature of Tally's examination of Morrison sets it apart from many other readings. Tally surveys the literary aspects of Paradise with precision, but she also sees Morrison's writing as part of a larger pattern of African American culture and consciousness. The black Exodus to Oklahoma and other places in the 1880s already has its historians. But how Morrison has rendered these "matters of fact," and how Tally discusses history and memory and storytelling add richness to the other accounts. Tally writes with enormous insight. Other scholars will need to read her appraisals in order to advance their own interpretations of Morrison's cultural contributions.

Patrick B. Miller Department of History Northeastern Illinois University Chicago, Illinois

Justine Tally's brief and insightful study of Toni Morrison's Paradise (1998) is provocative and multi-dimensional. It usefully situates the novel in relation to Morrison's oeuvre especially to Jazz (1992) and Beloved (1987) the two earlier novels in her trilogy about post-emancipation African American culture and society and to Morrison's own critical writing which suffuses her discussion. This makes the book as much a summary of where Morrison has taken us to at century's end as a specific critique of her latest novel. There is a welcome use of Morrison scholarship from Europe, too often ignored by Morrisonians in America, although there are some surprising Stateside ommissions. Philip Price's wonderful Dangerous Freedom (1997) is not cited and Jill Matus's Toni Morrison (1998) with its interesting work on trauma which could have illuminated aspects of the discussion here is ignored (too late to use?). Meanwhile, Linden Peach's rather derivative discussions - in Toni Morrison (1995) - are afforded too much space. As would be expected considering the novel's recent provenance, there is much use of newspaper and magazine reviews that Tally skilfully uses to show the often narrow nature of their concern with Morrison and their inability to deal with the complexity of a difficult novel. Tally astutely foregrounds "History" in its numerous guises as key to a discussion of Paradise giving the reader useful contextualisation and yet showing the limitations of a traditional literary historical approach to such a demanding postmodern novel. Most interestingly she discusses how important arguments about essentialism are to understanding this novel, making what is often an arcane discussion, clearcut and stimulating. Morrison is often accused of being difficult, Tally's clearly written and sensitively argued monograph supplies some dynamic answers to these postmodern puzzles.

Paradise Reconsidered is an elegantly written and tightly argued analysis of concepts of history, memory and narrative in Toni Morrison's Paradise. This will be an invaluable teaching resource for those of us who have included Paradise in our course lists, given not only Tally's knowledge of the field of African-American literature but also her ability to discuss complex concepts in lucid intelligible language.

Justine Tally's "Paradise" Reconsidered: Toni Morrison's (Hi)stories and Truths is the first monograph exclusively devoted to Morrison's most recent novel, Paradise. The reader finds a comprehensive and thoughtful discussion of history in Paradise, history of Paradise, history and Paradise, and the book concludes with an examination of Paradise in the context of Morrison's other prose works. A contribution to the Forum for European Contributions to African American Studies, a new scholarly series produced in collaboration with the international Collegium for African American Research, this concise book impressively combines close reading with a thoughtful examination of the role of memory in historical fiction and with pressing questions on isues of race and gender.