• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.61-76
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• 2018

This essay examines Toni Morrison's African-American characters' struggle in The Bluest Eye (1970) and Home (2012) through the lens of heteronormativity, arguing that they suffer double victimization due to both their race and gender. The Bluest Eye portrays a family tragedy caused by an African-American husband and wife's failure to live up to images of gender as represented in white, middle-class media. Written forty-two years later, Home describes an African-American man and woman who establish their own lives away from gendered standards after striving to meet social expectations and becoming traumatized in the process. Their adversities stem not only from the deeply rooted racial discrimination in American society but also from subtle gendered norms implanted by heteronormativity. Morrison's characters in her earlier narrative face a tragic denouement, ultimately destroying their children's lives. By contrast, Morrison's later characters explore more utopian ways of life unfettered by heteronormativity, overcoming hardships imposed by white-centered heteronormal society. By portraying socially victimized characters, Toni Morrison problematizes the power behind the discriminatory nature of heteronormativity and suggests a more gender-neutral, egalitarian way of organizing society, free from the constraints of heterosexuality and from violence created by normalized gender rules.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.167-187
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• 2005

This paper tries to follow Toni Morrison's postcolonial courses in her novels. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison examines the situation in which the white's values are the standard for the whole society through two little black girls, Pecola and Claudia. In Song of Solomon she recommends emulating Pilate's love and good attitude towards tradition to shape a positive identity for Afro-Americans, which Milkman comes to accept. In Tar Baby, Morrison suggests that Son's and Jadine's ideas, traditional and modern, should be combined. In Beloved, Morrison illustrates one of the ways in which all blacks can escape from their own trauma through Sethe's process of finding her self-worth. In Paradise Morrison shows that the real de-colonial way to overcome the effects of colonization is to create a new paradigm in which everyone is respected regardless of race. In her works, Morrison insists that by remembering and regretting slavery in America, people can overcome its aftereffects and trauma. Racial oppression still exists today, so Morrison will continue her beautiful, powerful and eye-opening work.