Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision: Faith, Folktales, and Feminism in Her Life and Literature

201 Pages·2021·3.243 MB·English

by  Nadra Nittle

PRAISE FOR TONI MORRISON’S SPIRITUAL VISION
“Nadra Nittle has written just the book we need: an engaging
and thorough consideration of Toni Morrison’s religious vision.
For too long Morrison’s significant spiritual influence has been
unspoken or, at best, misunderstood. No more. Nittle skillfully
journeys through the novelist’s life, fiction, and faith and retains
Morrison’s paradoxes while offering readers essential truths:
‘Catholicism . . . did not exist in the margins of Morrison’s
life,’ she writes. Nittle concludes that Morrison ‘told the public
what she thought they should know: she was a Catholic, she took
matters of faith seriously, and that wasn’t up for debate’— and
shows an expert understanding of the novelist’s sensibility.”
— Nick Ripatrazone, author of Longing for an Absent God
“In Nadra Nittle’s Toni Morrison’s Spiritual Vision, the author
masterfully details the myriad ways Morrison weaved religion,
spirituality, and African and African American folklore into
her stories. Nittle’s book is a wonderful exploration of how
Morrison combined her religious background, including her
Catholic faith, with the African American tradition (dating
back to the African tradition) of storytelling. Exploring com-
mon themes throughout Morrison’s work, this book is a must-
have for fans who want a deeper dive into what made the late
writer’s stories so compellingly magical.”
— Del Sandeen, author of Maya Angelou: Writer and Activist
“In this lively study, Nadra Nittle presides over religion, his-
tory, culture, and literary aesthetics to bring to us nothing less
than the Gospel according to Toni Morrison. Elements of Black
history, African folklore, theology, classical mythology, and bib-
lical typology gather at the seams of Morrison’s spiritual cos-
mogeny. The communities populating her gothic landscapes
transcend moral history. In the transhistorical sweep of the
story Nittle tells, the living struggle, falter, and rise only to find
that destiny is rarely appointed. And redemption in Morrison’s
alternative economy of salvation is a quasi- autonomous quest for
the many lives and many selves that make up an American self-
hood. Integrating disciplines and genres, this suggestive work
will garner a wide readership. Morrison fans will cheer its jour-
nalistic eloquence, archival analysis, and provocative payoffs
and, most of all, its unfolding revelations of a Nobel laureate in
the making.”
— Gregory S. Jackson, Rutgers University, author of
The Word and Its Witness: The Spiritualization of American Realism
“Toni Morrison’s Spiritual Vision: Faith, Folktales, and Feminism
in Her Life and Literature is the seminal text for anyone who
wants to gain a deeper understanding of an underappreciated yet
central part of Morrison’s life and literature: her Catholic faith.”
— Ekemini Uwan, public theologian
and cohost of Truth’s Table podcast
TONI MORRISON S
ʼ
SPIRITUAL VISION
FAITH, FOLKTALES, AND
FEMINISM IN HER LIFE
AND LITERATURE

TONI
MORRISON S
’
SPIRITUAL
VISION
FAITH, FOLKTALES, AND
FEMINISM IN HER LIFE
AND LITERATURE
NADRA NITTLE
FORTRESS PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS
TONI MORRISON’S SPIRITUAL VISION
Faith, Folktales, and Feminism in Her Life and Literature
Copyright © 2021 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All
rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles
or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any
manner without prior written permission from the publisher.
Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress
Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440- 1209.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are
taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®,
NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved
worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New
International Version” are trademarks registered in the United
States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are
from the King James Version.
Scripture quotations marked (DRA) are from the
Douay– Rheims 1899 American Edition.
Cover image: © Getty Image 2021; Toni Morrison,
Paris Match, Issue 3302 by Sebastien Micke/Contour.
Cover design: Lindsey Owens
Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-7151-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-7152-5
Contents
1 Black, Christian, and Feminist:
Toni Morrison’s Village Literature 1
2 A Magical Black Heritage 25
3 Black and Catholic:
A Long Tradition 49
4 Sula’s Deconstruction of the
Madonna, the Whore, and
the Witch 81
5 The Folklore and Holy Women of
Song of Solomon and Beloved 109
6 Paradise’s Black Madonna and
Afro- Catholicism 141
7 A Literary Legacy of Resilience 163
Notes 177
Index 185

1
Black, Christian, and Feminist
Toni Morrison’s Village Literature
“Invisible to whom? Not to me.”1
Toni Morrison once made this quip about Ralph Ellison’s
1952 novel Invisible Man to distinguish herself from the Black
male writers who came before her. She suspected that authors
such as Ellison, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin— who
described his inner critic as the “little white man deep inside
of all of us”2— wrote books with white readers in mind.
Morrison pointed out that while white people appear in
her books, she crafted her novels without “having the
white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it.”3 Instead,
Morrison wrote her books first and foremost for Black
people, a choice for which she refused to apologize. Just
as Tolstoy wrote for a Russian audience, she explained,
she was writing for Black readers— many of whom have
1