Lexington Books
Pages: 232
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-1-7936-0398-2 • Hardback • December 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)
978-1-7936-0400-2 • Paperback • October 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-7936-0399-9 • eBook • December 2019 • $42.50 • (£35.00)
Rhone Fraser is independent scholar and member of the Toni Morrison Society.
Natalie King-Pedroso is associate professor in the department of English and modern languages at Florida A&M University.
Acknowledgments
Editors’ Introductions
Natalie King-Pedroso
Rhone Fraser
Part I: Protagonist as Child
Chapter 1. Raising the Inner Child: Lessons in Emotional Development in God Help the Child
Jasmin Wilson
Chapter 2. “The House That Race Built:” Declarations of Toni Morrison’s Prophetic Voice in God Help the Child and The Bluest Eye
Khalilah Watson
Chapter 3. Making Black Lives and Families Matter: Honoring Family and Fatherhood in God Help the Child
Sukanya Senapati
Chapter 4. Harvesting Sight and Mind: The Crippling of Community in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
Jericho Williams
Part II: Protagonist as Professional
Chapter 5. “Sistah From Another Mista”: Examining the Familial Bond Between Bride and Brooklyn in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
Na’Imah Ford
Chapter 6. The Loss and Regaining of Self: Identity Negotiation in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
Xenia Liashuk
Chapter 7. “Memory is the Worst Thing About Healing:” Acknowledging Multigenerational Trauma and the Middle Passage Voyage of the Sable Venus in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child
Yolanda Franklin
Part III: Protagonist as Partner
Chapter 8. Socialized to Silence: A Close Reading of Lula Ann Bridewell and Booker Starbern in God Help the Child According to Kobi Kambon’s African Self-Consciousness Model
Rhone Fraser
Chapter 9. “You Will Love Them, No Matter How Ugly Their Truth Is”: Truth, Onomastics, and Black Women’s Humanity in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child and Mara Brock Akil’s Being Mary Jane
Natalie King-Pedroso
Appendix A. Discussion Questions: Conflicts in Comradeship
Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Coming at the issues from the inside, the collaboration between Rhone Fraser, Natalie King-Pedroso & Company, Conflicts in Comradeship, provides a timely and useful contribution to studies on the African American family along with analyses of Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child.
— Susan Neal Mayberry, Alfred University
In 1937, Margaret Walker wrote , “For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way/from confusion from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,/ trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,/ all the faces all the adams and eves and their countless/ generations…” Toni Morrison’s 11th novel, God Help the Child rings with Walker’s sentiments, and Natalie King-Pedroso and Rhone Frasier’s Critical Responses about the Black Family in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child: Conflicts in Comradeship does as well. This important collection of essays tackles the novel as a culminating moment in Morrison’s thought, a grief-filled extension of The Bluest Eye, and as a vessel sailing the African Ocean of mysteries. The text, like Morrison’s own, reaches out to the “shackled and tangled among ourselves” with the aim of letting a “beauty full of healing” come forth. Conflicts in Comradeship offers a unique and brave approach to criticism, collaboration, and reading Morrison’s under appreciated final work of fiction.
— Monifa A. Love Asante, Bowie State University