In the short story “Artificial Nigger,” O’Connor shows how racism is inculcated in a child. Toni Morrison’s sees the story as paradigmatic.
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Tag Archives: Toni Morrison
O’Connor Illustrates White Identity Formation
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Artificial Nigger, Flannery O'Connor, racism, white identity Leave a comment
Horizons Broadened
In this latest life installment, I share stories of the life-transforming impact that I’ve seen literature have upon my Slovenian students.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged “Mending Fences", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Birches, Ceremony, Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun, Leslie Marmon Silko, Robert Frost, Slovenia, study abroad, Ulysses Leave a comment
History That Refuses to Die
Until we face up to America’s dark history, it will be like the corpse in Poe’s “Premature Burial,” scratching to get out.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Premature Burial", American history, Beloved, Edgar Allan Poe, Light in August, return of the repressed, William Faulkner Comments closed
Morrison’s Healthy Response to Trauma
Stephen King (IT) and Toni Morrison (Beloved) show how we can live in thrall to our fears but also how we can move past them.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beloved, buried trauma, It, racism, Stephen King, uncanny Comments closed
MAGA Seeks to Erase Scourged Backs
Trump and MAGA want to erase America’s slave past, including the image “Scourged Back.” Morrison’s “Beloved,” another art work featuring a scourged back, is also under attack.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beloved, MAGA history, racism, Scourged Back, slavery Comments closed
Lit Packs a Powerful Punch
My book “Better Living through Lit” this past year was only one of several making the case that literature can be social dynamite.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beloved, Ben Jonson, Better Living through Literature, book bans, Christopher Marlowe, Dangerous Fictions, Harold Bloom, Hesiod, Homer, Iliad, Lyta Gold, Odyssey, Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, Plato, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Hurricane Milton and the Bad Angels
In which I discuss whether Hurricane Milton is punishing Florida for banning Milton’s “Paradise Lost”?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Destruction of Sennacherib", Book banning, hurricanes, John Milton, Lord Byron, Paradise Lost, Song of Solomon Comments closed
Why Books Banned? They Change Lives
Good lit can function like social dynamite, but it’s dynamite that’s needed for growth. Parents against growth therefore attempt to ban them.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged banned books week, Beloved, book bans, censorship, Homer, Odyssey, Plato, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Thoughts on Book Bans
Books are unsettling, which is why they are often banned. But we need to be unsettled to get a handle on the chaos that confronts us.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Hill We Climb", Allison Bechdel, Amanda Gorman, Beloved, Better Living through Literature, Book banning, Circle, David Eggers, Forever, Fun Home, Judy Blume, Lord of the Flies, Robin Bates, Romeo and Juliet, Stephen Chbosky, To Kill a Mockingbird, William Golding, William Shakespeare Comments closed