New Release Books by Toni Morrison

Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison''s best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR BERNARDINE EVARISTO Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, ''Beloved''. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison''s enduring masterpiece and best-known work.

''Toni Morrison was the lodestar who inspired us'' Bernadine Evaristo Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, when they were thrown together as roommates in a girls'' shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then at a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem but, despite their conflict, the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them is undeniable. Recitatif keeps Twyla''s and Roberta''s races ambiguous throughout the story. We know that one is white and one is black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? This story is a masterful exploration of what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, of race and the relationships that shape our lives. Now with a new introduction by Zadie Smith, it is as radically compelling and relevant today as it was when first written nearly forty years ago. ''Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known'' Tayari Jones ''Her work is an act of giving her community back to itself, so that people - African-Americans but the diaspora as well - can see and witness themselves'' Diana Evans

Stunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison''s best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR MARLON JAMES Soon after a local eccentric leaps from a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight, Macon ''Milkman'' Dead III is born. Brought up by his well-off black family to revere the white world around him, Milkman strives to make sense of his conflicting identities. Always seeking flight in some way, he leaves his Michigan home for the South, retracing the steps of his forebears in search of his own buried heritage and is introduced to an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins; the inhabitants of a fully realised black world. Evocative and kaleidoscopic, Song of Solomon is a brilliantly imagined coming-of-age tale.

A story of Ian’s childhood and who he was before his struggles with schizophrenia. The age of Ian''s onset of the disease and what he had endured through his many assessments. The effects his illness had on his family, with spouse, friends, and the many other relationships and the social stigma he had encountered throughout his lifetime. The story tells of Ian’s many high’s and low’s with several hospitalizations arising from numerous medication changes and mental breakdowns. The affects the medication had on his quality of life, mental health, physical health, stability, and the ability to have a somewhat “normal life”. How he struggled with the voices in his head and the paranoia he would often experience.

Inspired by Mao''s Little Red Book, this work is full of quotes to inspire and teach revolution. With quotes from the Combahee River Collective, Mao, Lenin, bell hooks, Assata Shakur, 2pac, Malcolm X, Stalin, Les Feinberg, Fred Hampton, Fanon, and more, this book is bound to inspire the revolutionary spirit inside you and your comrades to organize, educate, and revolt! Full list of authors: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin Mumia Abu-Jamal Sundiata Acoli James Baldwin Amilcar Cabral Fidel Castro Che Guevara Combahee River Collective Angela Davis Dimitrov Frederick Douglass Friedrich Engels Frantz Fanon Les Feinberg Paulo Freire Anuradha Ghandy Fred Hampton Harry Haywood Ho Chi Min bell hooks Enver Hoxha Dolores Ibarruri Kim Il-Sung George Jackson Jonathan Jackson Marsha P. Johnson Claudia Jones Frida Kahlo Ghasson Kanafani Leila Khaled Martin Luther King, Jr. Alexandra Kollantai James and Grace Lee Boggs Vladimir Lenin Audre Lorde Rosa Luxemburg Nelson Mandela Mao Tse-Tung Sub Marcos José Mariátegui Carlos Marighella Karl Marx Chico Mendes Evo Morales Toni Morrison Huey P. Newton Kwame Nkrumah Michael Parenti Rashid Paul Robeson Walter Rodney Arundhati Roy Thomas Sankara Bobby Seale Chief Seattle Assata Shakur Tupac Shakur Nina Simone Bhagat Singh Joseph Stalin Sukarno Kwame Ture Malcolm X Xi Jinping Malala Yousafzai

At once the ideal introduction to the legendary Nobel Prize winner and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith. "She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller." —Oprah Winfrey This inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison''s entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction—from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard—to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison''s literary vision. Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation—stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity—addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison''s work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and mind and moral authority.

A Vintage Shorts selection. In her elegant yet piercing style, one of our most celebrated and revered writers, Toni Morrison, interrogates the writer’s task and responsibility in two illuminating and essential pieces. Initially delivered as parts of lecture series and collected in The Source of Self-Regard, these pieces exhibit the depth with which Morrison probes the capacity and power of literature. An ebook short.

A box set of Toni Morrison''s principal works, featuring The Bluest Eye (her first novel), Beloved (Pulitzer Prize winner), and Song of Solomon (National Book Critics Award winner). Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Beloved transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. This spellbinding novel tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who escapes to Ohio, but eighteen years later is still not free. In The New York Times bestselling novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty and yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes, that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. With Song of Solomon, Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as she follows Milkman Dead from his rustbelt city to the place of his family''s origins, introducing an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. This beautifully designed slipcase will make the perfect holiday and perennial gift.

What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters’ greatest voices, pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time. Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzee’s Michael K, Morrison seeks the essence of goodness and ponders its significant place in her writing. She considers the concept in relation to unforgettable characters from her own works of fiction and arrives at conclusions that are both eloquent and edifying. In a lively interview conducted for this book, Morrison further elaborates on her lecture’s ideas, discussing goodness not only in literature but in society and history—particularly black history, which has responded to centuries of brutality with profound creativity. Morrison’s essay is followed by a series of responses by scholars in the fields of religion, ethics, history, and literature to her thoughts on goodness and evil, mercy and love, racism and self-destruction, language and liberation, together with close examination of literary and theoretical expressions from her works. Each of these contributions, written by a scholar of religion, considers the legacy of slavery and how it continues to shape our memories, our complicities, our outcries, our lives, our communities, our literature, and our faith. In addition, the contributors engage the religious orientation in Morrison’s novels so that readers who encounter her many memorable characters such as Sula, Beloved, or Frank Money will learn and appreciate how Morrison’s notions of goodness and mercy also reflect her understanding of the sacred and the human spirit.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR). These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others. An essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.

What is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

“She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truth-teller. She was a magician with language, who understood the power of words.” - Oprah Winfrey A vital non-fiction collection from one of the most celebrated and revered American writers Spanning four decades, these essays, speeches and meditations interrogate the world around us. They are concerned with race, gender and globalisation. The sweep of American history and the current state of politics. The duty of the press and the role of the artist. Throughout Mouth Full of Blood our search for truth, moral integrity and expertise is met by Toni Morrison with controlled anger, elegance and literary excellence. The collection is structured in three parts and these are heart-stoppingly introduced by a prayer for the dead of 9/11, a meditation on Martin Luther King and a eulogy for James Baldwin. Morrison’s Nobel lecture, on the power of language, is accompanied by lectures to Amnesty International and the Newspaper Association of America. She speaks to graduating students and visitors to both the Louvre and America’s Black Holocaust Museum. She revisitsThe Bluest Eye, Sula and Beloved; reassessing the novels that have become touchstones for generations of readers. Mouth Full of Blood is a powerful, erudite and essential gathering of ideas that speaks to us all. It celebrates Morrison’s extraordinary contribution to the literary world.

On a gray, rainy day, everything seems particularly frightening and bad to Louise until she enters a library and finds books that help her to know and imagine the beauty and wonder that have been there all along.

When Frank Money joined the army to escape his too-small world, he left behind his cherished and fragile little sitter, Cee. After the war, his shattered life has no purpose until he hears that Cee is in danger. Frank is a modern day Odysseus returning to a 1950s America mined with lethal pitfalls for an unwary black man. As he journeys to his native Georgia in search of Cee, it becomes clear that their troubles began well before their wartime separation. Together, they must return to their rural hometown of Lotus, where buried secrets are unearthed and where Frank learns at last what it means to be a man, heal, and - above all- what it means to come home" -- Cover verso.

The story of Desdemona from Shakespeare''s Othello is re-imagined by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison, Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Traoré, and acclaimed stage director Peter Sellars. Morrison''s response to Othello is an intimate dialogue of words and music between Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary. Morrison gives voice and depth to the female characters, letting them speak and sing in the fullness of their hearts. Desdemona is an extraordinary narrative of words, music and song about Shakespeares doomed heroine, who speaks from the grave about the traumas of race, class, gender, war and the transformative power of love. Toni Morrison transports one of the most iconic, central, and disturbing treatments of race in Western culture into the new realities and potential outcomes facing a rising generation of the 21st century.

Snuggle, snuggle. Time to rest. Nana joins us in her nest. There is no one like Nana in the whole wide world. She is the best. Nana knows how to take an ordinary afternoon and make it extra special! Nap time, story time, and playtime are transformed by fairies, dragons, dancing, and pretending -- and then mixing and fixing yummy, yummy fudge just like Nana and Mommy did not so many years ago.... Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison and her son Slade tell a story of what really goes on when Nana is left in charge!

An exploration of race from one of the twentieth century’s primary chroniclers of the African American experience. Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison’s writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity. Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison ‘She gave me permission to be unapologetically Black. She informed me of the power that resided in me. She validated me when the world questioned my humanity’ Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Sisters by Louisa May Alcott Love by Jeanette Winterson Babies by Anne Enright Language by Xiaolu Guo

Little Cloud likes her own place in the sky, away from the other clouds. There, the sky is all hers. She is free to make her own way and go where she wishes. Can Lady Wind show Little Cloud the power of being with others? Will Little Cloud agree there is strength in unity and change her ways? A fresh take on a classic story, Little Cloud and Lady Wind will teach kids how to work together to achieve their goals.

Jamey Tortoise is smarter than anyone else and Jimi Hare is faster, but when a race is announced each consults a reporter about how to get what he really wants when and if he should win in this updated twist on the familiar fable.