Beloved 1987
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Draws out attention to psycohelogical turmoil expereinace din context of slavery
The entire history of slavery in America is stretched out on a giant canvas. Inhuman
treatment of savles, both male female childrena mnnd adults
Beloved spiritual manifestation of history ois emboidemnt of 6 million or more dead and
enslaved africans. She has reclaimed her place
Jazz (1991)
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Jazz is Morrison’s most disturbing novel; it’s a disturbing psychological study of an African
American couple desperately seeking to come to terms with their frustrations and
aspirations and their fragmented directionless life, which propels them towards the absurd.
Joe Trace is a waiter who moonlights as a salesman of cleo patra beauty products, falls in
love with an 18-year-old impetuous Dorcas, and, within 3 months of the relationship, shoots
her to death.
At the funeral, he is determined, heartbroken, and mentally unsound wife Violet tries to
disfigure the corpse, which combining history, legend and memory, Morrison captures as
never before, the ineffable mood and complex humanity of black urban life at a moment in
our century we assume as understood.
Paradise (1999)
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‘They shoot the white girl first’ this is the stark opening of the novel, which then calls back
and forth through a century of history to explain who they are and why on a dewy Oklahoma
morning in 1976, they felt compelled to storm a decaying mansion and wreak violence on a
handful of women living in it.
Morrison chose that Africans all over the world are one people and have the same history
and share the same plight since they are seen as one by those outside the African nation, no
matter what, their class or status might be. Clearly, she wants African people to be one.
Morrison’s greatness as a novelist lies in her extraordinary power pf achieving a harmonious
fusion of her social concerns and the demands of the novel as an art form.
For the characters as well as the author, the racial, sexual and class oppression are more
horrible on the soul than those on the body.
BLACKS IN AMERICA (15 marks)
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Slavery or trade in human beings dates from prehistoric times or ancient civilisations used
slaves in the past, Africans were sent as slaves across the Sahara to be traded in the
Mediterranean while the Greco-Roman traded in the red sea and beyond tradesd slaves from
east Africa to Egypt and the middle east
The advent of euarpoean age of exploration in the 15th century gave a new dimension to the
slave age. The Portuguese exploring the western coast of Africa discovered a plentiful source
of slaves while at the end of the century, Christopher Columbus discovered what was to
become the main market for them.
Throughout the ensuing 3 centuries, European nations vide and fought for control of the
lucrative trade of supplying slaves in the west African island of Sao Taom and principle to
Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America, the Caribbean and the southern colonies
of north America following the development of plantation system from the second half of
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17th century. The Portuguese dominated the trade in 16th century, dutch in 17th, while in the
late 17th century saw a period of intense competition as the French the British and the
swedes joined in and in the second half of the 18th century the slave trade reached its peak.
A typical voyage for a British ship would involve a triangular course, south to the slave coast
of west Africa to pick up a cargo of slaves transported across the Atlantic in the most
appalling conditions to the west indies or the north American colonies from where sugar
cotton tobacco or similar commodities would be shipped home.
Estimates vary concerning the rate of slaves removed from Africa and the most reliable figure
is 12.5 million between 1650-1850 many more people musyt have lost their lives in wars
stimulated by the trade and the total drain meant that at the very least the African
population remained static for over 2 centuries.
The enslavement of African American in what became the united states formally began in
the 1630-40s. At that time, the colonial courts and legislatures made clear that Africans
unlike their white indentured servants served their masters for life and that their slave status
would be inherited by their children.
Slavery in the united states ended in 1860s. Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation and
Proclamation of January 1863 was a masterful propaganda tactic but in truth it set free only
those slaves outside the control of still controlled by the confederacy. The end to slavery in
the nation came in Dec 1865 when the Thirteenth amendment was ratified. The history of
African American slavery in U.S can be divided into 2 periods. The first coincided with the
colonial years in 1650-1790 and the second from 1790-1865.
Prior to independence slavery existed in all the amerrican colonies and therefore was not an
issue of sectional debate. With the arrival of independence however, the new northern
states those of new England along with new York Pennsylvania and new jersey came to see
slavery as contradictory to the ideas of French revolution (Liberty equality and fraternity) and
instituted programs of gradual emancipation.
Working Conditions of slaves