In ocean hush a woman black as firewood is singing. Next to her is a younger woman whose head rests on the singing woman's lap. Ruined fingers troll the tea brown hair. All the colors of seashells--wheat, roses, pearl--fuse in the younger woman's face. Her emerald eyes adore the black face framed in cerulean blue. Around them on the beach, sea trash gleams. Discarded bottle caps sparkle near a broken sandal. A small dead radio plays the quiet surf.

There is nothing to beat this solace which is what Piedade's song is about, although the words evoke memories neither one has ever had: of reaching age in the company of the other; of speech shared and divided bread smoking from the fire; the unambivalent bliss of going home to be at home--the ease of coming back to love begun.

When the ocean heaves sending rhythms of water ashore, Piedade looks to see what has come. Another ship, perhaps, but different, heading to port, crew and passengers, lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in Paradise.⁽¹⁾  

Thus ends Toni Morrison's seventh novel, Paradise. Though much has been said of the opening sentence of the novel, "They shoot the white girl first," these last paragraphs have been left virtually untouched by critics and reviewers alike. It is in this final epilogue, however, that Morrison in many ways sets this novel apart from other of her works, such as Sula and The Bluest Eye. In these final lines which are not connected to the concluding plot action except in metaphorical terms, she places Paradise into a different category, as she describes it, "the only overtly religious novel she has ever written."⁽²⁾

Of all of her previously published novels, Toni Morrison's Paradise was certainly the most eagerly awaited by the general public. As the first black American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, Morrison was firmly established in academic circles, but through the continuous efforts of talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, Morrison had also become a figure of popular acclaim. Winfrey chose Song of Solomon as her second book club selection and starred in the silver screen version of Beloved which appeared in 1998. Touted as the last book in a trio that dealt with different aspects of love including Beloved (the love of a mother for a child) and Jazz (romantic love), Paradise was originally to be have been titled War and takes on the broader theme of "the love of God and love for fellow human beings."⁽³⁾

The narrative is based on the plight of a small town in Oklahoma that was founded by ex-slaves who traveled from Louisiana following the Civil War and were turned away from another lighter-skinned black community during their journey. Originally called Haven, the sons of the town fathers relocate after World War II and rename the community Ruby. This town, population 360, in its attempt to turn about face from the oppression of slavery, prejudice, and the insult of being turned away by their own people, has instead come full circle. The novel opens in the year 1976, as the second and third generation men of the community, threatened by change, have decided to take matters into their own hands. Times are changing and wisps of the black power movement and the equal rights revolution have begun to wander through the populace. Scapegoats are needed; they are found in a convent on the edge of the town where several torn and battered women have assembled from all over the country. Like the original residents of Haven and Ruby, these women are the outcasts of society, but in the minds of the leaders of this society which has turned in on itself, they are the enemy and must be exterminated. From this stark beginning, Morrison introduces the women of the convent in their own voices, one at a time, and begins a journey that will wind along a path all the way back to the story of the internal conflicts of the original founders of Haven in the nineteenth century. Along the way, we meet a number of the town's residents and a Faulknerian crew of families and relatives intertwined to form the governing body in Ruby.

Look no farther than the Amazon reader review pages to find that popular response to Paradise covers all ends of the critical spectrum. A reader from Sacramento, California writes, "This book will change your reality," while nearby another comments, "I don't like books that are so pretentious that they make me feel stupid." Paradise is the longest of Morrison's novels and certainly the most complicated. I found it necessary to compose large genealogical charts just to keep the nine founding families of Haven straight, and then there are a number of periphery members of Ruby, in addition to the women at the convent and their families. The time-skipping movement of the action is also complicated, but as Morrison points out: "People's anticipation now more than ever for linear, chronological stories is intense because that's the way narrative is revealed in TV and movies. But we experience life as the present moment, the anticipation of the future, and a lot of slices of the past."⁽⁴⁾ The tale unwinds like layers of an onion, pungent and bringing the occasionally tear, and is not intended for casual bedtime consumption.

The novel was immediately claimed by a number of critics as a feminist tome, rehashing the oppression of the patriarchal society imposing its order on the creative and artistic women at the convent. Morrison, however, responds in an interview with Zia Jaffrey that although she is "especially interested in how women's fiction is reviewed and understood," she doesn't think of Paradise as a feminist novel and in fact "would never write any 'ist.'" When asked why she distances herself from feminism, Morrison replied, "In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed . . . I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."⁽⁵⁾ Paradise opens doors beyond gender, beyond race, to an acknowledgment of a higher order in the universe. The women at the convent form a community that transcends their past and is race-blind. Unlike many of the other communities of women that Morrison has created in previous fiction, these participants are not relatives or even from the same racial background, although the reader is never told who is what color which begs the question--why should that be important anyway?

In a novel etched in violence, Morrison seeks not only to answer the question of "why paradise necessitates exclusion,"⁽⁶⁾ but to explore the notion of perfection and utopia on earth. Both Haven and Ruby were founded on principles that their founders thought would stand even as society changed around them. The centerpiece of their society was a literal stone oven, but even though it was carefully reassembled when the town moved to Ruby, no amount of moving could stop the passage of time or the flow of change. Of course, as she has previously explained in her Nobel Prize address, "Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable."⁽⁷⁾ Paradise cannot completely capture the full flavor of the past one hundred years of turbulent African American history, but I believe that it does seize upon the essence of our human struggle to understand one another and our place in a larger universe.

Other Resources:

Reading Group Guide: www.randomhouse.com/features/morrison/paradise

Anniina's Toni Morrison Page: www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison

Discussion: www.usi.edu/distance/english/betty/paradise.htm

ENDNOTES-- to return to your place in the text, click your "back" button.

1. Toni Morrison. Paradise. New York: Knopf, 1998: 318.

2. Deirdre Donahus. "Morrison's slice of 'Paradise.'" USA Today. 22 January 1999.

3. Deirdre Donahus. "Morrison's slice of 'Paradise.'" USA Today. 22 January 1999.

4. Anna Mulrine. "This side of 'Paradise." U.S. News. 19 January 1999.

5. Zia Jaffrey. "Toni Morrison: The Salon Interview" Salon. 1998.

6. Anna Mulrine. "This side of 'Paradise." U.S. News. 19 January 1999.

7. Toni Morrison. The Novel Lecture in Literature, 1993. New York: Knopf, 1995: 21.

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