Anissa Janine Wardi's Books

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

An Ecology of Color

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

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Toni Morrison and the Natural World

An Ecology of Color

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

Critics have routinely excluded African American literature from ecocritical inquiry despite the fact that the literary tradition has, from its inception, proved to be steeped in environmental concerns that address elements of the natural world and relate nature to the transatlantic slave trade, plantation labor, and nationhood. Toni Morrison’s work is no exception. Toni Morrison and the Natural World: An Ecology of Color is the first full-length ecocritical investigation of the Nobel Laureate’s novels and brings to the fore an unequaled engagement between race and nature. Morrison’s ecological consciousness holds that human geographies are enmeshed with nonhuman nature. It follows, then, that ecology, the branch of biology that studies how people relate to each other and their environment, is an apt framework for this book. The interrelationships and interactions between individuals and community, and between organisms and the biosphere, are central to this analysis. They highlight that the human and nonhuman are part of a larger ecosystem of interfacings and transformations. Toni Morrison and the Natural World is organized by color, examining soil (brown) in The Bluest Eye and Paradise; plant life (green) in Song of Solomon, Beloved, and Home; bodies of water (blue) in Tar Baby and Love; and fire (orange) in Sula and God Help the Child. By providing a racially inflected reading of nature, Toni Morrison and the Natural World makes an important contribution to the field of environmental studies and provides a landmark for Morrison scholarship.

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Page Count

187

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496834186

ISBN 13

9781496834188

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

An Ecology of Color

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

An Ecology of Color

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

Average ratings

N/A

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

187

Publisher

Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published Date

ISBN 10

1496834186

ISBN 13

9781496834188

Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

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Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature

By: Anissa Janine Wardi

A very impressive book. Wardi's redefinition of the African American pastoral and her treatment of the themes of death, blues, and the collective memory are original and exciting."--Charles Scruggs, University of Arizona This book examines the preponderance of death and its accompanying funerary and mourning rituals in the African American expressive tradition. Focusing on the relationship between geography and death in African American literature, Anissa Wardi argues that the American South represents an unmarked graveyard that is simultaneously the sacred locus of the ancestors and a material memorial to their suffering. She proposes a new theoretical map that expands the definition of “home” in African American studies. Wardi traces the evolution of the relationship between place and the culture of death from Jean Toomer's Cane through the works of Toni Morrison, Ernest Gaines, and Gloria Naylor, providing close readings of the intertextual play in A Gathering of Old Men, Of Love and Dust, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Linden Hills, and Jazz. In so doing, she provides a fresh definition of the African American pastoral and focuses on a new and significant area in African American literature--the importance of gravesites and death as modes of memory, illuminating the continuity between the living and the dead that is such an important theme in African American literature. Anissa Janine Wardi is assistant professor of English and director of cultural studies and African American studies at Chatham College, Pittsburgh.

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Page Count

214

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813026881

ISBN 13

9780813026886

Book's by Anissa Janine Wardi

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

Toni Morrison and the Natural World

Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature

Death and the Arc of Mourning in African American Literature

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