While there are many courses and tutorials online, learning from a book is still one of the best ways to greatly improve your skills. Below I have selected top Toni Morrison books.
- Beloved (2004)
- The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) (2007)
- Song of Solomon (2004)
- Sula (2004)
- Home (Vintage International) (2013)
- Jazz (2004)
- God Help the Child (Vintage International) (2016)
- Paradise (Vintage International) (2014)
- A Mercy (2009)
- Toni Morrison: 365 Beautiful and Uplifting Quotes for Daily Reading (2018)
- Love: A Novel (2005)
- Tar Baby (2004)
- Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993)
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1999-03-04) ()
- Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series) (1994)
Beloved (2004)
Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) (2007)
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife.
Song of Solomon (2004)
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez.
Sula (2004)
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret.
Home (Vintage International) (2013)
When Frank Money joined the army to escape his too-small world, he left behind his cherished and fragile little sister, Cee. After the war, his shattered life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in danger.Frank is a modern Odysseus returning to a 1950s America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary black man.
Jazz (2004)
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.
God Help the Child (Vintage International) (2016)
At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths.
Paradise (Vintage International) (2014)
“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear.
A Mercy (2009)
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm.
Toni Morrison: 365 Beautiful and Uplifting Quotes for Daily Reading (2018)
“Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes.” ~ Toni MorrisonThis book is collection of 365 powerful quotes capturing the essence of Toni Morrison, arguably one of the greatest writers of our times. “Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you.
Love: A Novel (2005)
Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison’s spellbinding new novel is a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of black women in a fading beach town.In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger.
Tar Baby (2004)
Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1993)
The Nobel Prize-winning author now gives us a learned, stylish, and immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that promises to change the way we read American literature even as it opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race.Toni…
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1999-03-04) ()
Paperback Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (1762) ASIN: B01NAO86G3 Package Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars 2 customer reviews Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series) (1994)
Without apology Nobel Prize author Toni Morrison describes herself as an African American woman writer. These collected interviews reveal her to be much more. She has shared space in her creative life for her career in publishing, in teaching, and in being a single parent.
Best Toni Morrison Books That You Need
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some toni morrison books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
Author(s): A.J. Verdelle
ID: 3385055, Publisher: HarperCollins, Year: 2022, Size: 4 Mb, Format: epub
The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison
Author(s): Kelly L. Reames, Linda Wagner-Martin
ID: 3697806, Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, Year: 2022, Size: 9 Mb, Format: pdf
Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision: Faith, Folktales, and Feminism in Her Life and Literature
Author(s): Nadra Nittle
ID: 3636124, Publisher: Nadra Nittle, Year: 2021, Size: 3 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are truly chart-busters according to Los Angeles Times, others are drafted by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant links you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.