{"title":"A Black and White Ecology","authors":"A. Wardi","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The concluding chapter of the book considers the ways in which Morrison, in turning her attention to the colonies in A Mercy, examines the artifice of race and lays bare the myriad ways in which racial categorization was foundational to the building of America. Moreover, in Jazz, Morrison gestures to the plantation economy through references to Joe and Violet’s cotton farming. This monocropping was detrimental to the physical and social landscape of the nation. In recognition of the bankruptcy of a black and white ecology, the conclusion theorizes the rainbow, a trope in Morrison’s canon that complicates binaristic thinking. Morrison’s characters inhabit polychromatic worlds; their ecological relationships are multifaceted and contradictory, marked by a complex interweaving of beauty and grief.","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128628729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Green Ecology and Healing","authors":"A. Wardi","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers green as the preeminent color of ecological thought, environmental discourse and conservation movements. Most importantly, green is the color of chlorophyll, which produces the oxygen necessary to sustain life on earth. Attention will be paid to those characters in Morrison’s fiction who find respite, that is, breathing space, in the green world. What emerges in Morrison’s fiction are moments of enchantment with the plant world that provide a contrast to the unrelenting and ubiquitous social networks of racism in which the community is enmeshed. Even in Beloved, Morrison’s treatise on the brutality of chattel slavery, characters experience notable moments of enchantment with the vegetal world. Likewise, in Song of Solomon and Home, characters achieve a measure of health and healing through interactions with botanicals: forest trees, backyard flora, and plant seeds.","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130902029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"GREEN ECOLOGY AND HEALING:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130234747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Orange Ecology, Death, and Renewal","authors":"A. Wardi","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The chapter examines orange’s manifestation in fire, which, from an anthropocentric perspective, is regarded as dangerous and deadly, a punishing element, uncontainable and random. Fire is also evocative of post-Reconstruction torture that white supremacists unleashed against newly freed African Americans in the form of the Ku Klux Klan’s burning crosses, or race riot conflagrations. Fire is a material and symbolic element of violence, yet from an ecological prism, it is more complicated. While it is an act of destruction, forest fires, in particular, are necessary for healthy ecosystems. In fact, fire is an essential contributor to habitat vitality and replenishment, a catalyst for healthy change known as succession. In Sula and God Help the Child Morrison renders the complexity of fire as each novel pivots on the axis of destruction, violence, and renewal.","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"121 20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126097111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blue Ecology and Resistance","authors":"A. Wardi","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter addresses water and its indelible relationship to life forms. Earth is a blue planet: water comprises more than two thirds of the earth’s surface, and our body mass. Blue, for all its water and life-giving associations, is a melancholy color, a hue of sadness. Reading Blue, then, in terms of a blues ecology provides a nuanced framework for considering an African diasporic perspective. In that way, a blue/blues ecology is employed as a framework for theorizing survival and trauma, and physical and psychological dislocations. Specific attention will be paid to islands, swamps, and shorelines as sites of resistance in Tar Baby and Love. These ecotones are liminal spaces where aquatic and terrestrial frontiers meet, and where past and present and human and nonhuman ecosystems encounter and integrate.","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121760919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ORANGE ECOLOGY, DEATH, AND RENEWAL:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123897369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"BROWN ECOLOGY AND FERTILITY:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"79 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131513098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conclusion.","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129553583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brown Ecology and Fertility","authors":"A. Wardi","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496834164.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter offers a treatise on brown, the color of soil and compost. Though seemingly a hue consigned to decay, brown matter, the very substance that allows for growth and fertility, is life. Specific attention will be paid to The Bluest Eye and Paradise as Morrison deftly ties soil fecundity and biodiversity to race. It is of note that Morrison frames The Bluest Eye, a novel that explores the devastation of racism, with a discourse on soil health and marigold seeds. In Paradise, Morrison again returns to dirt, specifically compost, which she analogizes to the rich lives of a multigenerational group of women. In prioritizing brown as the first chapter of Toni Morrison and the Natural World, this book begins, as Morrison does, by centering African Americans. The universe of color in Morrison’s fiction is inside a palette of browns.","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134289333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"BLUE ECOLOGY AND RESISTANCE:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx3g.8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":312732,"journal":{"name":"Toni Morrison and the Natural World","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126496089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}