Seeking Roots: Ancestral African Cultures In Toni Morrison's Works

Toni Morrison is the first American black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She has written eight novels since 1970. Through the study on her four novels, Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1992), this thesis explores the African influence upon Morrison, who, as an American African, is influenced not only by American culture but also by African traditional culture. The four novels overflow with myth, folklore that are rooted in Africa as well as African cosmology such as African's beliefs in the existence of God, gods and ancestral or non-ancestral spirits. By studying on these African ingredients, I find out that the four novels possess a dominant theme–the importance of the ancestor, which is also of utmost importance in African cosmology. Therefore, I conclude that the purpose of Morrison's writing is to remind the contemporary African Americans of the importance of the realization of their roots. Only one knows his own culture's history, can one find his true place in a whitened world. So basically it is still a problem of identity. I thus mediate on the writing purpose of Toni Morrison from the angle of post-colonialism and give a brief description of how her characters search for their identities. In addition, from the black American feminist point of view, the thesis discusses the women's images as the wise ancestors, as well as the importance of other women in the four novels.