7. Haunted Homes: Toni Morrison

Abstract

Beginning with the word “spook,” that originally American term for the ghost which returns as a primarily American racial slur, Coughlan examines the specter of race in the USA. Moving from Marilynne Robinson’s Home to Toni Morrison’s Home by way of Morrison’s Paradise, this chapter progresses from an idea of a community founded on the basis of an apparent covenant with God to the idea of the house, or, more specifically, from the idea of a spiritual paradise to a haunted home. As Paradise returns as spectral “Paradise,” the chapter concludes by examining the ways in which Morrison’s novels themselves become haunted homes accommodating her ghost writing.