Cover -- Half-Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Series Editor's Introduction -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: The Grace and Gravity of Toni Morrison, Lucille P. Fultz -- Toni Morrison in the international context -- Chloe Ardelia Wofford/Chloe Anthony Wofford/Toni Morrison -- The grace and gravity of Morrison's fiction -- Sentient artistry -- Daunting narratives -- The issue of language -- Grace in language -- Love and the discourse of nostalgia -- The gravity -- Part I Paradise -- 2 Separate Spheres?: The Appropriation of Female Space in Paradise, Shirley A. Stave -- Ruby as the death of the mother -- Public versus private spheres in Ruby -- Dogmatic patriarchy -- The Convent as private sphere -- Controlling the Symbolic Order -- Excess and the feminine -- Uniting the spheres -- 3 The Working Through of the Disconsolate: Transformative Spirituality in Paradise, Gurleen Grewal -- Recovering from trauma: "Acting out" and "working through" -- The meaning of home -- The spiritual healer's journey -- Conclusion: Paradise at home -- 4 Reclaiming the Presence of the Marginalized: Silence, Violence, and Nature in Paradise, Aoi Mori -- Introduction: Historical excavation -- Rewriting history -- Violence as the flaw of historical exclusiveness -- Exposing the family tree -- The reversal of binary oppositions -- Revisions of Pieta -- Recovery of transgressive women and ecocritical reading -- Nature, violence, and gender -- Organic farming and the transcendence of dichotomies -- Conclusion: The Convent garden and rebirth -- Part II Love -- 5 "Some to Hold, Some to Tell": Secrets and the Trope of Silence in Love, Carolyn Denard -- Morrison's treatment of silence -- Silence in Love -- The opening lament -- Significations on silence -- The silence of secrets -- Conclusion.

6 Power and Betrayal: Social Hierarchies and the Trauma of Loss in Love, Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber -- "Othering" and cultural hierarchies -- Love's community -- Relating through hatred and trauma -- The rebirth of love and the naming of desire -- Conclusion -- 7 The Power in "Yes": Pleasure, Dominion, and Conceptual Doubling in Love, Herman Beavers -- The attributes of power -- Love and the critique of pleasure -- Love and the dynamics of dominion -- Dominion and the politics of conceptual doubling -- Conclusion -- Part III A Mercy -- 8 Narrative Epistemology: Storytelling as Agency in A Mercy, Jami Carlacio -- Introduction: Narrative (as) Ethos -- Of origins and stories -- Self-consciousness divided -- Becoming Florens -- Conclusion: Narratology as epistemology -- 9 "What Lay Beneath the Names": The Language and Landscapes of A Mercy, Marc C. Conner -- Naming the land: Mastery versus mapping -- Jacob's journey: Creation, dominion, damnation -- Morrison's theology: The creator and the creation -- The female quest and a new language for the land -- Joining language and landscape: The sacred sense of place -- Conclusion -- 10 Visions and Revisions of American Masculinity in A Mercy, Susan Neal Mayberry -- Morphing European thralldom into American-style slavery -- Building a new national manhood -- Creating a man's castle out of "out there" -- Good men endowing mothers and children with their rights too! -- Redefining homosexual masculinity -- Spotting the dangerously free black male -- Recouping the she-lion's mane-man -- Notes on Chapters -- Works Cited -- Further Reading -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.