Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, And Race In The Novels Of Toni Morrison (suny Series In Psychoanalysis And Culture)

Quiet As It’s Kept draws on and extends recent psychoanalytic and psychiatric work of shame and trauma theorists to offer an in-depth analysis of Toni Morrison’s representation of painful and shameful race matters in her fiction. Providing a frank and sustained look at the troubling, if not distressing, aspects of Morrison’s fiction that other critics have studiously avoided or minimized in their commentaries, this book challenges established views of Morrison, showing her to be an author who forces readers into uncomfortable confrontations with matters of race. In Quiet As It’s Kept, J. Brooks Bouson explores these issues in Morrison’s works The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise. Morrison, Nobel prize-winning author, has viewed part of her cultural and literary task as a writer to bear witness to the plight of black Americans. “Quiet as it’s kept, much of our business, our existence here, has been grotesque. It really has,” she has commented. As she exposes to public view sensitive race matters in her fiction, Morrison presents jarring depictions of the trauma of slavery and the horrors of racist oppression and black-on-black violence. Focuses on the role of shame and trauma as it looks at issues of race, class, color, and caste in the novels of Toni Morrison.Quiet As It's Kept draws on and extends recent psychoanalytic and psychiatric work of shame and trauma theorists to offer an in-depth analysis of Toni Morrison's representation of painful and shameful race matters in her fiction. Providing a frank and sustained look at the troubling, if not distressing, aspects of Morrison's fiction that other critics have studiously avoided or minimized in their commentaries, this book challenges established views of Morrison, showing her to be an author who forces readers into uncomfortable confrontations with matters of race. In Quiet As It's Kept, J. Brooks Bouson explores these issues in Morrison's works The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise.Morrison, Nobel prize-winning author, has viewed part of her cultural and literary task as a writer to bear witness to the plight of black Americans. “Quiet as it's kept, much of our business, our existence here, has been grotesque. It really has,” she has commented. As she exposes to public view sensitive race matters in her fiction, Morrison presents jarring depictions of the trauma of slavery and the horrors of racist oppression and black-on-black violence.J. Brooks Bouson is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University in Chicago. She is the author of The Empathic Reader: A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self and Brutal Choreographies: Oppositional Strategies and Narrative Design in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. Quiet As It's Kept Contents Preface 1— "Speaking the Unspeakable": Shame, Trauma, and Morrison's Fiction The Impact of Trauma and Shame on the Individual Trauma and the Individual Shame and the Individual Cultural Shame and the Deference-Emotion System Race Matters: Shame, Trauma, and the African-American Experience Trauma, Shame, and Storytelling in Morrison's Novels 2— "The Devastation That Even Casual Racial Contempt Can Cause": Chronic Shame, Traumatic Abuse, and... 3— "I Like My Own Dirt": Disinterested Violence and Shamelessness in Sula 4— "Can't Nobody Fly with All That Shit": The Shame-Pride Axis and Black Masculinity in Song of Solo... 5— "Defecating Over a Whole People": The Politics of Shame and the Failure of Love in Tar Baby 6— "Whites Might Dirty Her All Right, but Not Her Best Thing": The Dirtied and Traumatized Self of S... 7— "The Dirty, Get-on-Down Music": City Pride, Shame, and Violence in Jazz 8— "He's Bringing Along the Dung We Leaving Behind": The Intergenerational Transmission of Racial Sh... Notes 1— "Speaking the Unspeakable" 2— "The Devastation That Even Casual Racial Contempt Can Cause" 3— "I Like My Own Dirt" 4— "Can't Nobody Fly with All That Shit" 5— "Defecating Over a Whole People" 6— "Whites Might Dirty Her All Right, but Not Her Best Thing" 7— "The Dirty, Get-on-Down Music" 8— "He's Bringing along the Dung We Leaving Behind" Works Cited Primary Sources Morrison's Fiction Morrison's Nonfiction Interviews with Morrison Secondary Sources Index A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P S T U V W Y