"The first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison is one of the most celebrated women writers in the world. In Bodily Evidence: Racism, Slavery, and Maternal Power in the Novels of Toni Morrison, Geneva Cobb Moore explores how Morrison captures and mirrors the tragedy experienced by and transformation of African Americans, using parody and pastiche, semiotics and metaphors, and allegory to portray black life in the United States, teaching untaught history to liberate Americans. In this short and accessible book, originally published as part of Moore's Maternal Metaphors of Power in African American Women's Literature, she covers each of Morrison's novels, from The Bluest Eye to Beloved to God Help the Child. With a new introduction and added coverage of Morrison's final book, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, Bodily Evidence will be essential reading for scholars, students, and readers of Morrison's work"-- Provided by publisher.

Toni Morrison's demonic parody of racism and slavery -- The Bluest Eye : Jim Crow America and the cultural womb of stillbirth -- Sula : the bottom as dispossessed maternal womb -- Song of Solomon : paternal law versus the maternal spirit of sacrifice -- Beloved : the African American Holocaust of American slavery -- Paradise : utopia and dystopia in the all-negro community -- Tar Baby, Jazz, Love, and A Mercy : the rejection/absence of a loving maternal force -- Home -- God Help the Child -- Afterword : Toni Morrison, 1931-2019.