Forum: “After Morrison”

Abstract

In this forum, four scholars – Corrine Collins, DeLisa D. Hawkes, Stephanie Li, and Howard Rambsy II – were invited to help further frame the “After Morrison” discussion through the varied fields and perspectives as exhibited through their responses to the editors’ prompts. Together, the scholar’s takes on Morrison and illuminations of recent African diasporic cultural producers whose work is placed in conversation with Morrison help set the stage for the work being done in the issue. We wanted to include as many voices as possible in the special issue’s discussion of Toni Morrison and 21-century African diasporic cultural production. We thought a forum would offer the opportunity to place literary and cultural scholars whose views we wished to solicit in conversation around Morrison’s influence as well as the forms it assumes in the work of contemporary African diasporic art and/or letters. Further, we encouraged the respondents to also consider the ways and means by which Black artists and writers move beyond Morrison to advance new ideas and innovative thinking that help progress African diasporic cultural production and the scholarship conversing with it.