I have been an avid reader since I was a child. One of my two favorite authors, Toni Morrison has a new book coming out on November 11, 2008. "A Mercy" is available for pre-order and of course I reserved my copy.
A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.
In
the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas,
virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were
rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were
planted and took root.
Jacob 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, “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a
Portuguese lady.” Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older
servant woman at her new master’s house, but later from a handsome
blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.
There are other voices:
Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka,
herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a
strange girl who’s spent her early years at sea; and finally the
devastating voice of Florens’ mother. These are all men and women
inventing themselves in the wilderness.
A Mercy reveals
what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the
ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in
order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that
abandonment.
Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.
About the Author
Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities, Emerita, at Princeton University. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She lives in Rockland County, New York, and Princeton, New Jersey.
The first Toni Morrison book that I read was "The Bluest Eye". That book articulated how ugly I felt as a dark-skinned girl. It is a reminder of how Black people in America discriminate against each other.
"Beloved" is a great book about love, loss, slavery, passion, and deep sadness. This book is not for the timid. The movie did not do this book any justice. Don't ever judge a book based upon a movie; it is impossible to equate the two.
For those of you that have never read a Toni Morrison book may become confused when you initially pick up one of her books. The genius of her writing style is that you do not understand what you have read until you turn the page.
Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Iyanla Vanzant have made me the woman that I am. They have taught me to love myself and to learn from my suffering. These three women have built my character in a way that no family member has.
One day I will stop being cheap and buy a Kindle so that I can stop buying books and download them. I am running out places to put all the books that I have.
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