Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2018

Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

  • Positions Toni Morrison's novels within the timely framework of geocriticism and spatial studies

  • Covers a wide range of Morrison's oeuvre, including Love, A Mercy, and Jazz

  • Highlights not only the significance of Morrison's novels within literary studies but also her intellectual, political, and cultural influence

Part of the book series: Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies (GSLS)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
  2. Introduction

    • Herman Beavers
    Pages 1-22
  3. Back Matter

    Pages 233-253

About this book

This book examines Toni Morrison’s fiction as a sustained effort to challenge the dominant narratives produced in the white supremacist political imaginary and conceptualize a more inclusive political imaginary in which black bodies are valued. Herman Beavers closely examines politics of scale and contentious politics in order to discern Morrison's larger intent of revealing the deep structure of power relations in black communities that will enable them to fashion counterhegemonic projects. The volume explores how Morrison stages her ruminations on the political imaginary in neighborhoods or small towns; rooms, houses or streets. Beavers argues that these spatial and domestic geographies are sites where the management of traumatic injury is integral to establishing a sense of place, proposing these “tight spaces” as sites where narratives are produced and contested; sites of inscription and erasure, utterance and silence.  

Keywords

  • geography in Toni Morrison's novels
  • place-making in Sula
  • racialized spaces in Toni Morrison's work
  • trauma in Toni Morrison's novels
  • hegemony and space in Song of Solomon
  • "the personal is the political" and Toni Morrison's work
  • Yi-Fu Tuan’s concept of topophilia
  • affect studies and Tar Baby
  • black political agency in Toni Morrison's work
  • gendered conflict over space in Song of Solomon
  • black feminist standpoint epistemology
  • intersection of race and gender conflict in Toni Morrison's work
  • intersectionality in The Bluest Eye
  • black women's negotiation of space and place
  • Southern Men in Toni Morrison's novels
  • alienation in Song of Solomon
  • The Great Migration, identity, and Toni Morrison's Jazz
  • Racism in the Jazz Age
  • black womanhood and masculine anxiety
  • politics of scale in Toni Morrison's novels

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Herman Beavers

About the author

Herman Beavers is Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access