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EW's guide to 15 brilliant, essential Toni Morrison books

EW's guide to 15 brilliant, essential Toni Morrison books

By David Canfield and Leah Greenblatt

August 06, 2019 at 01:08 PM EDT

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The Greatest

Todd Plitt/Getty Images

On Tuesday, America's greatest living novelist, Toni Morrison, died at 88. Here, EW's book critics introduce 15 of her most essential works, from children's literature to hard-hitting criticism to some of the finest novels ever written.

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The Bluest Eye (1970)

Vintage

Morrison’s searing, lyrical debut, with its stark examination of then-still-largely-forbidden subjects like incest, alcoholism, and mental illness, injected an electric dose of realism into American literature at the dawn of the 1970s, and made its protagonist Pecola Breedlove — who wishes, impossibly, for the blue eyes of her childhood dolls — an indelible avatar of young black girlhood. —Leah Greenblatt

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Sula (1973)

Vintage

The follow-up to Bluest Eye returns to Morrison’s native Ohio in a sprawling tale of interwoven struggles and racial tensions in a small town — much of it centered on the contentious lifelong friendship between the more conventional Nel and the defiant, free-spirited Sula. —LG

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Song of Solomon (1977)

Vintage

Among the best literary character studies ever written, Song of Solomon offers a wrenchingly honest and human portrait of an extraordinarily ordinary man, from birth until death; it manages to capture an enitre lifetime in just over 300 pages. For this story of the journey to independence and self-realization, Morrison won a slew of prizes including the National Book Critics Circle Award. —David Canfield

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Tar Baby (1981)

Vintage

She’s a light-skinned, Sorbonne-educated fashion model, he’s a dreadlocked fugitive who washes up in a wealthy white couple’s Caribbean home; they fall unaccountably, desperately in love. Baby hardly shies away from deeper issues of race and class, but its’ unlikely swerve into feverish love story offered Morrison readers a rare romantic swoon. —LG

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Beloved (1987)

Morrison's masterpiece is an epic examination of the psychological toll of slavery, telling its gripping and haunting story of a former slave and her 18-year-old daughter, as well as, more subtly, a portrait of American womanhood, motherhood, and family that ranks among literature's most moving and enduring. Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2013, EW ranked it among the 10 greatest novels of all-time. —DC

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Jazz (1992)

Vintage

In 1920s Harlem, a middle-aged salesman kills his much-younger lover in a crime of passion; at the funeral service, his wife attacks the corpse. Those are the outlines, though hardly the sum of Morrison’s fittingly musical riff on romance, regret, and yes, jazz. —LG

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Playing in the Dark (1992)

Vintage

Morrison is known for her novelistic prowess; today, students are just as likely to encounter her rigorous critical work. Indeed, Playing in the Dark, adapted from Morrison's Harvard University lectures, offers a trenchant reframing of the literary canon through a black female lens, radical then and, frankly, now. —DC

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Paradise (1997)

Vintage

Morrison’s first novel to follow her 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature — and the final installment in a self-proclaimed trilogy that also encompasses Beloved and Jazz — offers a sprawling cast of characters in all-black town, and an unflinching examination of what happens when the oppressed, against all better instincts, become the oppressor. —LG

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Love (2003)

Vintage

The mothers, daughters, and mistresses of a man named Bill Cosey weave their stories in a dense tapestry of a novel that is about many things, but most of all its titular feeling: the thing that “leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.” —LG

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A Mercy (2008)

Vintage

In the earliest days of American slavery, a mother and daughter are indentured on a Maryland plantation; comparisons to Beloved are inevitable, and often find in the favor of the former, but Mercy still has its own legion of fans. —LG

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Peeny Butter Fudge (2009)

Simon and Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books

Morrison wrote a series of children's books with her younger son, Slade Morrison, a painter. This delightfully silly and warm installment centers on three kids and their relationship with their Nan. (Slade died at age 45, of pancreatic cancer.) —DC

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Home (2012)

Vintage

This slim novel packs quite a punch. The second to last in Morrison's career, Home interrogates the experience of a black 24-year-old veteran of the Korean War as he returns to a segregated everyday life. EW raved of the book, "[It's] a moving testament to taking responsibility for your own life — especially the parts you’d like to look away from." —DC

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God Help the Child (2015)

Vintage

Morrison’s lone contemporary novel—and as of now, her final work of full-length fiction—centers on Bride, a woman with blue-black skin whose lighter-hued mother’s rejection frames the entirety of her life and the choices she makes, her color “a cross she will always carry.” (The book’s original title, tellingly, was The Wrath of Children). —LG

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The Origin of Others (2017)

Vintage

This expansive nonfiction volume, drawn from Morrison's Norton lectures, considers the "other" in American narrative, analyzing not just literary texts but political, historical, and sociological works as well. It's a book that elegantly outlines the evolution of her critical thinking. —DC

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The Source of Self-Regard (2019)

Knopf

This is officially the final book of Morrison's published during her lifetime. Released back in February, The Source of Self-Regard features essays, speeches, and various musings by the author. It's a fitting cap to her astonishing career, as here, Morrison reflects and digs into her own work and its themes, and meditates on the legacies of Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin. We'll leave you with a fitting passage from the book: "A writer's life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity." —DC

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By David Canfield @davidcanfield97
By Leah Greenblatt

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EW's guide to 15 brilliant, essential Toni Morrison books

1 of 16

The Greatest

1 of 16

2 of 16

The Bluest Eye (1970)

2 of 16

3 of 16

Sula (1973)

3 of 16

4 of 16

Song of Solomon (1977)

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5 of 16

Tar Baby (1981)

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6 of 16

Beloved (1987)

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7 of 16

Jazz (1992)

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Playing in the Dark (1992)

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Paradise (1997)

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10 of 16

Love (2003)

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11 of 16

A Mercy (2008)

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Peeny Butter Fudge (2009)

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Home (2012)

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God Help the Child (2015)

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The Origin of Others (2017)

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The Source of Self-Regard (2019)

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