Toni Morrison on Mothers and Motherhood

This collection of essays explores the gamut of Toni Morrisons novels from her earliest to her most recent. Each of the essays examines the various ways in which Morrisons work delineates and interrogates Western cultures ideological norms of mothers, motherhood, and mothering. The essays consider Morrisons female, and in some cases male, characters as challenging the concept that mothering and motherhood is a stable notion. The essays reveal both that mothering is a central concept in Morrisons work and that an examination of this pervasive notion illuminates her corpus as a whole. Toni Morrison on Mothers and Motherhood offers a wide range of scholarship that provides a compelling look at Morrisons work through an array of interdisciplinary approaches that are grounded in feminist/gender studies. This interdisciplinary collection of essays will be of interest to scholars and critics concerned with the notions of how we define mother/motherhood/mothering and the problem of its interpretation within Western society, as well as those engaged in the interpretation of African-American literature, and Morrisons work in particular.