Introduction: Global Morrison

Abstract

As novelist, academic, and public intellectual Toni Morrison has made a profound contribution to the transformation of the black intellectual and political aesthetic. In many ways Morrison’s literary and theoretical formulations represent the feminization of black writing traditions through her representations of identity as being fluid and socially constructed. Her novels transform memory into alternative narratives of recovery that illuminate obscured histories of slavery, migration and urbanisation. This project constitutes a rich legacy for a new generation of writers who, working within a global nexus, interrogate the racial economics of trauma, dislocation and exile in ways that dissolve the distinctions between African American, colonial, and postcolonial studies. The introduction to this special issue highlights the transnational scope of Morrison’s work, with a particular focus on her non-fiction.