"Those millions of readers familiar with Toni Morrison’s work, in particular her novel Beloved, won’t be surprised at the numerous instances of brutality and deprivation in her new book, A Mercy, the Nobel Prize winner’s ninth novel and her first since Beloved to depict American slavery—albeit in a very early, seventeenth-century form. What may well throw them for a loop is the redemptive tone: a pristine landscape, a compassionate white Northern farmer, and a notable absence of racial animosity—felt even more keenly in an election year with a full deck of race cards. In A Mercy, Jacob Vaark’s collection of laborer-charges (a Native American, a black child, an orphan, and two indentured servants) are united by and against a spreading culture of servitude that has little to do with skin color." New York Times
Morrison will be in Washington DC tonight to discuss this new book and all of the themes addressed.
“I really wanted to get to a place before slavery was equated with race,” Morrison told New York Times reporter Boris Kachka. “Whether they were black or white was less important than what they owned and what their power was.”
Today's Event:
Title: Toni Morrison: A Mercy
Date: Thursday December 4, 2008
Time: 7:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Politics & ProseStreet: 5015 Connecticut Ave Nw
City State Zip: Washington, District of Columbia 20008
See http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1319401/ for all the details!
Thanks to poet Dehija Maat for the heads-up!
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