Tar Baby

by Toni Morrison

Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, African American, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Race

306 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 1981

About the author

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.

Reviews

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The island exaggerated everything. Too much light. Too much shadow. Too much rain. Too much foliage and much too much sleep."- Toni Morrison, Tar Baby

I think the tropical Caribbean setting and all the talk of candy and flowers fooled me into thinking that this would be one of Toni Morrison's simpler reads. It turns out that like with most Toni Morrison books, it's impossible to summarize everything; there's just too much to talk about.

In this novel we meet retired rich American Valerian Street living on the L'Isle des Chevaliers with his much younger wife, Margaret, two African-American servants and their niece, Jadine, who is visiting from France. A sailor, Son, who has abandoned ship, enters their lives and that's when things get interesting. I read this book as a story of many tensions, tensions between couples, tensions about old secrets, race, responsibilities, and dreams.

For me, the most important character in this book is Jadine. I always like the rebel women and I think she is exactly that. Unlike the other women portrayed in this book, she's not portrayed as maternal at all; additionally she has unique dreams and aspirations and doesn't feel the need at all to fall back into the traditional ways of thinking. Out of all the women in the book, she seems to be the only one not willing to be limited by her gender and race. When she says to herself, "...but if you think you can get away with telling me what a black woman is or ought to be...", well that really spoke to me on so many levels, as I'm sure it will speak to a lot of black women. Jadine is a light-skinned black woman, called "yalla" by the local islanders, seen of as prim and proper because she lives in France and is a fashion model. Son thinks she's a sell-out, and Jadine struggles with her thoughts on her identity as a black woman, her white boyfriend in France, having a white patron, and feeling more comfortable in white culture as that was where she was raised. When she thinks about her boyfriend in France, this is what goes through her mind, thoughts on potential fetishization and "authenticity":

"I wonder if the person he wants to marry is me or a black girl? And if it isn't me he wants, but any black girl who looks like me, talks and acts like me, what will happen when he finds out that I hate ear hoops, that I don't have to straighten my hair, that Mingus puts me to sleep, that sometimes I want to get out of my skin and be only the person inside-not American- not black-just me?"

I felt for Jadine thinking that she might be a race traitor for wanting to go back to France instead of moving back to the States. I had supportive feelings towards Jadine throughout the book because I've often been accused of not being black enough and I think that it's important for more people to note that as black women our upbringings are diverse, as are our temperaments, personalities, interests and everything else. As such, Son's treatment of Jadine's perceived lack of blackness really really irked me because I've been on that receiving end, although not as harshly. And Son seems to be the opposite, very rooted in and connected to his blackness and you wonder whether a relationship between him and Jadine could ever work out, so it was a surprise to me that they embarked on a relationship (and I wonder what that says about Son). Their love story was so very intense:

"Gradually she came to feel unorphaned. He cherished and safeguarded her. When she woke in the night from an uneasy dream she had only to turn and there was the stability of his shoulder and his limitless, eternal chest. No part of her was hidden from him. She wondered if she should hold back, keep something in store from him, but he opened the hair on her head with his fingers and drove his tongue through the part. There was nothing to forgive, nothing to win and the future was five minutes away. He unorphaned her completely. Gave her a brand-new childhood. They were the last lovers in New York City—the first in the world—so their passion was inefficient and kept no savings account. They spent it like Texans."

I was very intrigued about how place plays a part not just in a story but also in a relationship. On a tropical island everything seems idyllic but after reading this book it's clear that running off to a tropical island isn't going to solve our problems and we will end up bringing our baggage with us. And this also got me thinking about how a relationship started in one place and moved elsewhere works. When Son goes back to the States the way he describes his home is so different to what we have seen in the Caribbean and it makes you wonder how things will change for him and Jadine on a different backdrop:

"Since 1971 Son had been seeing the United States through the international edition of Time, by way of shortwave radio and the views of other crewmen. It seemed sticky. Loud, red and sticky. Its fields spongy, its pavements slick with the blood of all the best people."

I have to mention the wife, Margaret, who really annoyed me . I see her as the non-black friend of a black person who feels as though she has somehow earned the right to make disparaging comments about black people. She can't possibly be racist because, after all, she has a black friend. Some of the comments that came out of Margaret's mouth were so foul. I wish Jadine had been stronger and told her off instead of keeping her thoughts to herself:

"She was uncomfortable with the way Margaret stirred her into blackening up or universaling out, always alluding to or ferreting out what she believed were racial characteristics. She ended by resisting both, but it kept her alert about things she did not wish to be alert about."

This was a great reread and I loved it considerably more this time around. I understood more and I always get renewed appreciation for how Morrison helps us understand why her characters are the way they are but never expects us to side with them.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toni Morrison is amazing. She is the greatest of all time (in my opinion); but really, which other author could keep me entertained and awestruck on Every single page for five consecutive books?
I must preface all reviews of her writings with total praise and veneration because her work demands nothing less.

I did not expect to enjoy this as much, since Tar Baby is one of her less popular books, but as it turns out this is my favorite of her books so far and not only that, it is now one of my favorite books, Period.
My goodness, the story was wonderful. Jadine and Son: **insert never ending paragraph on how much I loved them and how drop-dead gorgeous they both are and how my heart bled at the end and oh my god that chapter when they were in New York and Dear God in heaven, do send me my sexy ass man to strut around New York with too!!*
I digress.

I should've known that Toni Morrison would write a love story like no other, unlike the usual corny cliche drivel.

Welcome Tar Baby, welcome to the club of the small number of books that I reread every year for obvious reasons (I love them times ten). This book! This book! Absolutely magnificent!!

Toni Morrison, I love you. Understatement.

[leynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.

***

Tar Baby is one of Toni Morrison's most ambitious novels. In it, Morrison attempts two new (to her) narrative strategies – situating the central plot within an insular setting beyond the geographical boundaries of the United States mainland and juxtaposing Black and white characters to dramatise the racial complexities that determine the American cultural landscape.

At the centre of the novel stands the Black woman Jadine. On the one hand, Morrison wants to affirm the self-reliance and freedom of a Black woman who makes choices for her own life on her own terms. On the other hand, she also seeks to "point out the dangers ... that can happen to the totally self-reliant if there is no historical connection." More specifically, Morrison’s dilemma in Tar Baby is how to narrate the quest of the contemporary Black female hero when she happens to be a cultural orphan, one whose sense of self is based upon a denial of her own cultural heritage and an identification with one that is not her own.

On a deeper level, the novel is about the disparity Morrison sees between the women of her remembered past and the women of the present epitomised in the character of Jadine. This becomes even more evident as Morrison states in the introduction that she essentially wrote Tar Baby for her late grandmother. Consequently, the Biblical epigraph to the novel – "it hath been declared ... by them ... of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you" – does not simply foreshadow the conflicts that arise in the Street household. Instead, it points to the serious "contentions" that Morrison examines in the character of Jadine.

Thus, Tar Baby can be interpreted as a modern cautionary tale in which Morrison draws on the African American oral narrative tradition to expose the pitfalls of white middle-class aspirations for the Black woman and to illustrate the consequences of her social and cultural "misbehavior". Jadine's quest is one for psychic wholeness, but because she does not heed the cautions that come to her in various forms, she experiences a failed initiation or an aborted quest. Indeed, her quest for wholeness is unsuccessful because she accepts values and morals of white middle-class culture without question and she rejects the very cultural constructions of race and mothering that could heal and transform her consciousness.

While Morrison was still in the process of writing Tar Baby, she delivered the 1979 commencement address at Barnard College, in which she expressed the precise thematic concerns of the novel:

"I am suggesting that we pay as much attention to our nurturing sensibilities as to our ambition. You are moving in the direction of freedom and the function of freedom is to free somebody else. You are moving toward self-fulfilment and the consequences of that fulfilment should be to discover that there is something just as important as you are."

The novel serves, then, both as a remembrance of a cultural tradition of nurturing and as a cautionary tale for those like Jadine, who define themselves against themselves and their cultural past in the interest of self-fulfillment.

Tar Baby is essentially the narrative of Jadine's flight from crisis. Uncertain about whether her white boyfriend in Paris wants to marry her for her or wants to marry just "any black girl", and distraught over the transcendent beauty and insulting gesture of an African woman dressed in yellow, she flees to the Caribbean to the home of her adoptive parents where she hopes to "sort things out before going ahead."

Jadine is actually adopted twice – first by her aunt and uncle who raise her from the time she becomes an orphan at the age of 12, and, second by Valerian Street, the wealthy, white benefactor who pays for her Sorbonne education. Although her European education leads to a degree in art history and a career as a highly acclaimed fashion model, both adoptions take her further from her actual and metaphorical birthplace and contribute to the emotional and spiritual uncertainty that plague her.

While she is in the process of sorting out the direction for her life, Son, a renegade, intrudes into the household. His presence, little by little, throws the entire house into a state of disarray which exposes the hostilities, lies, secrets and untold narratives that have been concealed under the guise of being "like a family." Yet Son is only partially to blame for the chaos that disrupts the false sense of familial calm. Instead, it is the revelation of mothering gone awry – the secret narrative that Valerian's wife, Margaret, had abused their son, Michael, when he was a small child – that creates the most serious form of rupture.

In the wake of the chaos that ensues from this revelation Jadine and Son become lovers and flee from the island. More than lovers, they attempt to become rescuers of one another. In New York City, she attempts to rescue him from a romanticised view of African American life and culture. In Eloe, Florida, Son's all-Black hometown, he attempts to rescue her from ignorance and disdain for her cultural heritage. Jadine flees from this crisis, first, by returning to the island and, ultimately, by returning to Paris. In trying to find her, Son returns to the Caribbean, where the indigenous Black people try to dissuade him from his search. He ultimately yields to the maternal powers of nature and joins the blind horsemen in the tree-covered hills, who, according to the traditional Black myth and folklore of the island, had once been runaway slaves.

Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split.

What this synopsis of the novel cannot account for are the various forms in which Jadine is warned implicitly and explicitly about the dangers of rejecting her cultural heritage. The most striking form of this caution occurs early in the novel when an African woman with "skin like tar" makes her feel "lonely and inauthentic". Jadine views her as a "woman's woman – that mother/sister/she; that unphotographable beauty." The image of this woman haunts Jadine throughout the text as a sign of how, in rejecting her Blackness, Jadine rejects her African past and her ancestral mothers.

The next significant form of caution appears in the form of Michael, the son of Valerian and Margaret Street. Jadine knows of his misgivings about her identity, her education and her values. Michael's queries about Jadine's priorities call attention to her as the real cultural orphan. As she reflects on her conversation with Michael, she admits: "I knew what I was leaving ... But he did make me want to apologise for what I was doing, for what I felt. For liking 'Ave Maria' better than gospel music ... Picasso is better than an Itumba mask. The fact that he was intrigued by them is proof of his genius, not the mask makers."

In this statement, Jadine not only reveals her negative, stereotypical attitudes toward African American and African culture, but she also attempts to justify her distance from that culture. Indeed, having been raised by her aunt and uncle to mirror rather than question white Western values, she rejects what those values reject.

The third and most direct form of caution comes from Son. Son attempts to rescue Jadine from her state of cultural orphanage. In the heat of an argument in which Jadine and Son confront each other about their inability to live in the other's world, Jadine says that while he has been on the run hiding from sheriffs and lawyers, she's been "learning how to make it in this world." Son replies that "the truth is that whatever you learned in those colleges that didn't include me ain't shit ... If they didn't teach you that, then they didn't teach you nothing because until you know about me, you don't know anything about yourself."

Jadine's resistance and aversion to the various received cultural instructions of what it means to be Black and female become most apparent when she and Son attempt to make love, and it seems to Jadine that the room is crowded with all the Black women – "Rosa and Thérèse and Son's dead mother and ... Ondine and Soldier's wife Ellen .. and her own dead mother and even the woman in yellow." – who "didn't believe her." In feeling and being alienated from these women, Jadine is unable to benefit from the very sources that could teach and nourish her. The fact that these women haunt her suggests that psychic wholeness will continue to elude her until she bridges the cultural gulf between what they represent and who she is. Collectively, these women introduce the most powerful form of caution in the entire narrative.

In an interview, Morrison said: "For me, the tar baby came to mean the black woman who can hold things together." It can be interpreted that Jadine is this narrative's failed tar baby. She is the one who "entraps" Son, yet at the same time is unable sustain a relationship with him because she lacks the ancestral power of being able to "hold things together." Jadine believes she is rescuing him "from the night women who wanted him for themselves , wanted him feeling superior in a cradle deferring to him; wanted to settle for wifely competence when she could be almighty, to settle for fertility rather than originality, nurturing instead of building." The relationship between Son and Nadine does not hold together because she only sees mutually exclusive choices, she does not realize it is possible to nurture and to build. Because Son is rooted in the past, symbolised by his romantic attachment to Eloe, and because she feels the key to personal and collective success is to forget the past, their relationship cannot hold itself together.

At the end of the novel, the words of Ondine, Jadine's aunt and adoptive mother suggest that she feels responsible for the cultural orphan Jadine has become. She laments not having told her that "a girl has got to be a daughter first ... If she never learns how to be a daughter, she can't never learn how to be a woman; a woman good enough even for the respect of other women ... you don't need your own natural mother to be a daughter." Disconnected from the cultural knowledge of self and nurturing that could heal this rupture, Jadine seems fated to remain a cultural orphan, in a state of permanent "motherlessness." Ultimately, the novel shows that the Black woman who denies her "historical connections" and "sacred properties" risks psychic chaos and alienation from the very resources that could empower her.

Morrison does not revive the tar baby folktale merely to entertain us. Instead, she dusts it off, transforms it and entraps us with its rich, metaphorical complexity. As a cautionary tale for our time, Tar Baby criticises much, but beneath the critique and implicit in the warning is an affirmation that can heal even as it instructs.

[emma]

4 of the 6 books i gave 5 stars last year were by toni morrison. so yeah, i'll be reading everything she ever wrote.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toni Morrison takes a more relaxing Caribbean pace to tell a story which involves sex, colonialism, and love. It is a tantalzing mix and, as always, so well-written. I loved how the narration passed fluidly from one character to the other and how several scenes were narrated by butterflies outside the windows observing the crazy humans. Also, the dialogs in the story are incredibly realistic.

In a nutshell, Valerian is a 70-year-old wealthy American businessman who has purchased an island near Haïti where he came for an extended stay with his 50-year-old wife Margaret. They have two servants, Ondine and Sydney. Valerian has been extremely generous with their orphaned niece Jadine, sending her to school and traveling. She is in her twenties, sensual, superficial. Into these lives, Son arrives as a clandestine having jumped a boat and hidden in their house for a week without getting caught. In this web of relationships, the racism (white on black but also black on black) comes out as does some sordid family history. This results in a climax that sends Valerian into denial and reclusion and Son and Jadine run off to New York to attempt a love-centered life.

In this passage, I really like how the plants react to the music played in the greenhouse by Valerian:
He turned the switch that brought the “Goldberg” Variations into the greenhouse. At first he’d experimented with Chopin and some of the Russians, but the Magnum Rex peonies, overwhelmed by all that passion, whined and curled their lips. He settled finally on Bach for germination, Haydn and Liszt for strong sprouting. After that all of the plants seemed content with Rampal’s Rondo in D. By the time he sugared his breakfast coffee, the peonies, the anemones and all their kind had heard forty or fifty minutes of music which nourished them but set Sydney the butler’s teeth on edge although he’d heard some variety of it every day for forty years. (p. 11)

Typically poetic Morisson prose with a beautiful metaphor:
A house of sleeping humans is both closed and wide open. Like an ear it resists easy penetration but cannot brace for attack. Luckily in the Caribbean there is no fear. The unsocketed eye that watches sleepers is not threatening—it is merely alert, which anyone can tell for it has no lid and cannot wax or wane. No one speaks of a quarter or half moon in the Caribbean. It is always full. (p. 43)

and again:
they were all reflection, like mirrors, chamber after chamber, corridor after corridor of mirrors, each one taking its shape from the other and giving it back as its own until the final effect was color where no color existed at all. (p. 73)

Toni truly has some incredible analogies:
“Oh, I’m fine, I guess,” but her voice was flat, like a wide river without any undertow at all. (p. 97)

Margaret is one of the many women that, facing abuse in their childhood, resolve to never be a victim again - even if it means taking out the violence on her own kin:
All around her it was like that: a fast crack on the head if you let the hunger show so she decided then and there at the age of twelve in Baltimore never to be broken in the hands of any man. Whatever it took—knife blades or screaming teeth—Never. (p. 124)

Great sense of humor here:
The avocado tree standing by the side of the road heard her and, having really seen a horse’s shit, thought she had probably misused the word. (p. 127)

And just after, I love how the avocado tree interacts silently with Jadine:
Jadine dusted off the back of her skirt and turned toward the house. The avocado tree watched her go then folded its leaves tightly over its fruit. (p. 127)

Another powerful metaphor:
because they were simply there, all open, unprotected and unmanipulable as Yardman’s was, stretched like a smokehouse cot where hobos could spend the night. A back where the pain of every canker, every pinched neck nerve, every toothache, every missed train home, empty mailbox, closed bus depot, do-not-disturb and this-seat-taken sign since God made water came to rest. (p. 139)

I really loved this image. And it suits this character so well.
But heavy clouds grouped themselves behind the hills as though for a parade. You could almost see the herd assemble but the man swinging in the hammock was not aware of them. He was dwelling on his solitude, rocking in the wind, adrift. (p. 165)

Again, same character and wonderful analysis:
The conflict between knowing his power and the world’s opinion of it secluded him, made him unilateral. But he had chosen solitude and the company of other solitary people—opted for it when everybody else had long ago surrendered, because he never wanted to live in the world their way. (p. 166)

Toni was an environmentalist as well as a feminist at heart:
That was the sole lesson of their world: how to make waste, how to make machines that made more waste, how to make wasteful products, how to talk waste, how to study waste, how to design waste, how to cure people who were sickened by waste so they could be well enough to endure it, how to mobilize waste, legalize waste and how to despise the culture that lived in cloth houses and shit on the ground far away from where they ate. And it would drown them one day, they would all sink into their own waste and the waste they had made of the world and then, finally they would know true peace and the happiness they had been looking for all along. (p. 203)

Yet another beautiful passage:
“Imagine yourself in that dark, all alone in the sky at night. Nobody is around you. You are by yourself, just shining there. You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself, it’s not a twinkle, it’s more like a throb. Star throbs. Over and over and over. Like this. Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can’t throb anymore, when they can’t hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.” (p. 214)

A wonderful way to describe love:
For if he loved and lost this woman whose sleeping face was the limit his eyes could safely behold and whose wakened face threw him into confusion, he would surely lose the world. (p. 220)

Love in New York...
He unorphaned her completely. Gave her a brand-new childhood. They were the last lovers in New York City—the first in the world—so their passion was inefficient and kept no savings account. (p. 229) But there is a warning there...inefficient and no savings account will come back to haunt them.

I think that, easily, the most unlikable character in the book is former beauty queen, former sadistic mother, 50 year old Margaret:
Margaret awoke very early that morning, having had the dream she ought to have had: it was unspeakable. She rose at once; the wonderful relief of public humiliation, the solid security of the pillory, were upon her. (p. 235)

Reflections on innocence:
Was there anything so loathsome as a willfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore unworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines. (p. 243)

I wish I could write dialogs as fluid and realistic as these:
“I guess I didn’t want nobody to read em and know where I was . . .” But it was too lame an excuse to continue with. “Is that why you kept the empty envelopes too?” “Yeah. They had your handwritin on em, you know. You wrote it, that part anyway. ‘Franklin Green.’ You got a nice handwritin. Pretty. Like your mama.” (p. 250) There isn't much there, but there is a lot there.

Toni's take on Frank Sinatra:
If I make it in New York, then that’s all I do: ‘Make it in New York.’ That’s not life; that’s making it. I don’t want to make it; I want to be it. (p. 266). A creed for life - Be It!

I like this summary of the relationship between Jadine and Son:
Each knew the world as it was meant or ought to be. One had a past, the other a future and each one bore the culture to save the race in his hands. Mama-spoiled black man, will you mature with me? Culture-bearing black woman, whose culture are you bearing? (p. 269)

The fundamental problem between them laid out by Son:
You turn little black babies into little white ones; you turn your black brothers into white brothers; you turn your men into white men and when a black woman treats me like what I am, what I really am, you say she’s spoiling me. You think I won’t do all that company shit because I don’t know how? I can do anything! Anything! But I’ll be goddamn if I’ll do that!” (p. 270)

Sadly, the end of the relationship as Jadine throws him back his dime...
“Pick it up.” She said it again and didn’t even sit up. She just lay there, stroking her raw silk thighs the color of natural honey. There was sealskin in her eyes and the ladies minding the pie table vanished like shadows under a noon gold sun. (p. 273)

Jadine's regrets:
No time for dreaming, although sometimes, late in life, somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth generation she might get wind of a summer storm one day. The scent of it will invade her palace and she will recall the rush of wind on her belly—the stretch of fresh wings, the blinding anticipation and herself, there, airborne, suspended, open, trusting, frightened, determined, vulnerable—girlish, even, for an entire second and then another and another. She may lift her head then, and point her wands toward the place where the summer storm is entering her palace and in the weariness that ruling queens alone know, she may wonder whether his death was sudden. Or did he languish? And if so, if there was a bit of time left, did he think how mean the world was, or did he fill that space of time thinking of her? But soldier ants do not have time for dreaming. They are women and have much to do. Still it would be hard. So very hard to forget the man who fucked like a star. (p. 291)

Gruesome, but so well-written:
A gull negotiated the breeze and swooped down on a black starfish. The gull pecked it, flew away and returned to peck again and again until finally the starfish yielded the magenta string that was its heart. The man watched the gull tear it out with a great deal of interest. (p. 293) Highly symbolic of the broken relationships between nearly all of the characters at this point. But particularly in Valerien's deception in the innate character of Margaret.

There was always something majestic about Son:
Having nothing quiet to do with his huge hands except finger his original dime, he opened the envelope and looked at the pictures of all the places and people he had loved. Then he could be still. Gazing at the photos one by one trying to find in them what it was that used to comfort him so, used to reside with him, in him like royalty in his veins. (p. 294)

And, unfortunately, too late:
“Let her go?” asked Son, and he smiled a crooked smile. Let go the woman you had been looking for everywhere just because she was difficult? Because she had a temper, energy, ideas of her own and fought back? Let go a woman whose eyebrows were a study, whose face was enough to engage your attention all your life? Let go a woman who was not only a woman but a sound, all the music he had ever wanted to play, a world and a way of being in it? Let that go? “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.” (p. 298)

This was a fantastic novel which I recommend along with The Bluest Eye and Beloved as my two favorite Toni Morisson books.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The world will be there while you sleep.' This is true for you as well…the world will be here, but certainly not as rich or as full. But it will be here as you rest."- Tar Baby.

This is Toni Morrison's most romantic work- and her most underrated. This gem of a novel is one that has not been written as much about as her other masterpieces "Beloved", "Jazz" "The Bluest Eye" and "Song of Solomon".

Set in the Caribbean in the 1970s- the book is about Jadine, beautiful, black and is taken care of the wealthy Street family. Jadine is a model, ambitious, and extremely bougie. But she falls for Son, "it was the name that called forth the true him, that he never lied to, the one he tucked in at night" (Morrison 139) dark-skinned, mysterious, and their love affair embarks from the Caribbean, Eloe, Florida and New York. But it is color that drives them together, and apart, that makes this book unforgettable.

I have been revisiting novels by La Morrison lately because there isn't a writer out there who could make you laugh with such bawdy humor; then make an unexpected turn to unimaginable heartbreak.

At this more closely rendered reading, I really found myself spellbound by first, the lushness of Morrison's prose. Her description of setting, especially Isle des Chevaliers, is lush, thick and romantic- the humidity evocative of both plantation beauty and horror though it is set in the Caribbean.

The relationships that revolve around Jadine, her heroine speaks plainly of whiteness as the construct that must be respected and seen as the be all, end all.

Jadine has a Swedish boyfriend named Ryk who has given her a coat of 90 sealskins; a modelling career that teeters jetsetting between Paris and New York; and a life of luxury offered to her by the candy magistrate Valerian Street and his unstable, scheming wife Margaret.

Jadine's aunt and uncle Sydney and Onedine are employed by the Streets, and therefore bow before them in order to survive, playing out the trope of master vs slave; i.e- servant, or be served.

When she meets Son, a stowaway American fugitive from Eloe, Florida- a place so humid, hot and filled with sex and a community rooted in blackness, Jadine's views on privilege and race are questioned, as Son tries to acclimate her to that world- yes, there is a lot of pain that comes along with poverty. But the freedom that comes with it is way too intoxicating to bear.

Son and Jadine's views on freedom and sexual politics come at a collision course when she attempts to change him into something he isn't, and he tries to get her in touch with her black roots. But since her life's always been taught in the white construct, the novel is sorrowful and cynical at the same time that the matter of race will never be agreed on.

Poetic and romantic, erotic seen through the female lens, the shades of grey that come with race relations are never easy to navigate, and at the end, it seems everyone loses out only to feel longing and regret- at the end of the day, you simply end up romanticizing.

One of the most romantic moments in literature I've ever read is that magical night that Jadine and Son spend talking about the stars: For Jadine, it's the superficial; for Son, it's a magic that cannot be defined:

“Imagine something. Something that fits in the dark. Say the dark is the sky at night. Imagine something in it.”
“A star?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t. I can’t see it.”
“Okay. Don’t try to see it. Try to be it. Would you like to know what it’s like to be one? Be a star?”
“A movie star?”
“No, a star star. In the sky. Keep your eyes closed, think about what it feels like to be one.”
Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can’t throb anymore, when they can’t hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.” (Morrison 214)

I melt each time I read this. Every word is unabashedly romantic, every word has a tone of sadness. I certainly feel that Morrison must have loved Son enough to give him such a rich monologue- it reminded me of monologues that other male characters she’s written in other books have similarly declared about the world about them: Guitar, Milkman, Paul D, Joe Trace.

Love comes and goes, and it's the connection that Jadine and Son have in this moment is why I think Morrison was one of the greatest, and most romantic of writers.

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It was a silly age, twenty-five; too old for teenaged dreaming, too young for settling down. Every corner was a possibility and a dead end.”



While the drama of Toni Morrison's Tar Baby primarily unfolds on an isolated Caribbean island, thus creating the illusion of a community that is free from the dictates of a larger society, the characters are not in any way free from the attitudes imposed on them as well as a history of slavery. Outwardly, this novel feels less rooted in history than several other of Morrison's novels. However, Morrison masterfully shows that her characters are shaped by history, and almost predestined to behave in certain ways, even when they appear to have escaped it. The characters were not very sympathetic, but the story was compelling.

“I wonder if the person he wants to marry is me or a black girl? And if it isn't me he wants, but any black girl who looks like me, talks and acts like me, what will happen when he finds out that I hate ear hoops, that I don't have to straighten my hair, that Mingus puts me to sleep, that sometimes I want to get out of my skin and be only the person inside-- not American-- not black-- just me?”

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is difficult to explain the force that permeates Toni Morrison's books. I felt drunk on words by the end of this book.

In this book's foreword Toni Morrison writes: "All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen—for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest. Then comes the image, the picture of the thing I have to invent to invent: the headless bride in her wedding gown; the forest clearing."

I took these words to be instructive and tried to read this story this way. It is more difficult than one would think, to listen before envisioning but what an enriching experience.

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The opening of this book was a complete surprise to me as a moderately seasoned TM reader – it felt just like the start of an action movie, some kind of spy thriller, only infused with poetic beauty. Something of this atmosphere persisted; perhaps because of Valerian, the white millionaire, who somehow wears an arch-villain halo even when he’s being likeable. I also found the dialogue sparky and often humorous, the tone frequently light

So is it a light book? Noooooo of course not. From the turbulent, animistic, gorgeous description of the island itself suffering under its colonisation, the rivers and trees crying out and mourning and re-making themselves stormily, something deep, treacherous, elemental is going on. If books give us help, if they do more than distract, then they have to touch wounds, dredge up the hidden, speak the silenced.

The disarray my soul is in now, after reading this, is a sublime disarray. Thoughts, emotions collide with more force, shove each other further apart, making space, lowering density so that I float into a state of euphoric agitation, an overactive susceptibility to connection. My eyes brush others on the commute with an electric jolt, I hear my own heart in the hailstorm.

Each person in this story commands love and contempt from me, calls out humility and self-awareness in turn. Awareness of my whiteness, cis woman-ness, ignorance and misuses of knowledge, misuses of feeling. This statement about beauty that rings so true comes in the context of despair:

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.

my first thought was, that’s why I stopped taking photographs

Through the camera
World’s flat. Circumnavigate
your experience

but then I thought this insight is not meant to be an eternal truth – it is a truth of horror and mourning. And I had my own, secondary insight: truths belong to times and states

Even dreams are true while they last. And do we not live in dreams?

and they change shape, when the light changes at evening or when somebody makes you laugh

Taking the view of one character then another (all of whom are real and alive as if TM had no choice but to write down what they did, had to do, after she had conjured them so marvellously into being), the narration weaves a fabric so exquisite and magical that the arbitrary becomes necessary. TM can remake the sacred out of dry dust and its history of pain.

I hated myself for hating the young educated black woman Jadine. I liked Son, who values his South-USian extended family, but with deep reservations. I cheered him on at times, but he has many flaws, even in his good parts. When he thinks about the women of his hometown building things, being strong and capable and thus impossible to position as inferior to men, his ascription of value is ableist. His passion makes him cut himself off at the root from self-knowledge and the nourishment of love.

The white woman character, Margaret, was somewhat neglected as a child because her family assumed that having beauty she would not need character. She is stereotypically afraid of Son, the young, beautiful black man, and TM shows how the vulnerability of her racial and gendered identity is turned into a weapon against him. I felt for her even though she is irritating and emotionally disturbed.

In Paris, Jadine stares at an African woman whose eyelashes, we are told, have been burned away by the power of her gaze. The woman buys three eggs, and aims spit at Jadine from well out of range, a gesture of hatred. She and her eggs reappear in a nightmare vision Jadine has in which all the other women she knows show her their breasts. Both the scene of the African woman and the nightmare linger for me, enigmatic, searing. I cannot sort them out. But lately I have noticed that I can go back into old experiences and get new things out of them. Someday I will figure out these scenes and find my sympathy for Jadine.

Those carrying the frightening weight of beauty; Son, Jadine, and Margaret, are compelling characters, but the book has others – Sydney, the dignified butler, Ondine, the expert cook, both a little self-righteous and snobby; Gideon the ‘yard man’ and Therese the washerwoman and helper, poor folks, undereducated, gossip-hungry, generous and kind. Importantly, they connect to the land, the land seized from the natives, the land where slaves were brought, the land that sustained those captives who never surrendered.

[brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

xxxxxxx

[Aly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I simply can't stomach a book in which I'm expected to accept that a woman falls in love with a man who essentially sexually assaults her, and whose justification for it is explicitly that he was so in awe of her that he needed to debase her.

This is the core of the "romantic relationship" at the center of this book, and while the book is critical of the gender dynamics in Jadine and Son's relationship as they attempt to sort out whose world they will live in and whose relationship model they will take, I think it still left uncriticized the notion that women are attracted to sexually violent men (provided they are attractive). What is the turning point that makes Jadine overlook Son's assault? She sees him after a bath and a haircut, and he is good looking.

This is the problematic center of a book whose edges I enjoyed. Much of the action on the island has the feeling of a drawing room drama-- by seeing the reactions of many characters to the same events in the same space, Morrison demonstrates the way in which character's privilege blinds them to the experiences of those around them. Particularly interesting is the complexity with which she approaches questions of race and class-- even Black servants have people who are beneath their notice, and each person is motivated to diminish the humanity of those below them in order to maintain their status. If I ignore Son's assault on Jadine, the conflict between their life experiences and their attempt to come to a consensus about how to live as Black person in America (which is shaped, too, by gender politics, as Son attempts to remove Jadine from a life in which she is the primary breadwinner and mover in the public sphere) takes potentially abstract conflicts and makes them concrete by putting them in a relationship.

The writing is lush but straightforward-- it's been a while since I've read Morrison's other books, but this felt like an early point in the development of her prose.

But at the end of the day, I felt like this book trivialized sexual violence, and I find it hard to square that with all of the other excellent elements of it.

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read this for a little litery refreshment and I just feel like Toni can do no wrong. Clunky, ridiculous ending and all, this novel is a mountain of incendiary ideas about identity: black identity, black womanhood, black manhood, cultural identity, childhood trauma, motherhood, class, sex, and on and on.

But seriously, what is the ending of this novel???

Nonetheless, I live.

[Mmars · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm wondering how many 1 and 2 star ratings came from readers thinking this would be a good Caribbean vacation beach read. I also wonder how many of them were clueless to the meaning of the term "tar baby". Sigh... There should be no need to discuss that, it's rather obvious that, well, ALL the characters, black, white and mulatto, were tar babies. Inextricably stuck to who they are, no matter where they are, they cannot escape themselves, their pasts, their childhoods. In fact, WE ARE ALL tar babies. And just like the characters in the book it is how we deal with what is inside us that determines how we cope with the circumstances of life on the outside.

I love Morrison's almost overwhelming poetic intensity. For example, early in the book when introducing Margaret (the wealthy white once a trophy wife) Morrison describes her husband Valerian's house as "bigger than her elementary school" and dinners with his friends in which "there men talked about music and money and the Marshall Plan." As in poetry, there is prominent sensory description, in this case smell and touch. Usually writing about the tropics is full of color - colors of the sea, the sands, the birds, flowers, fruit - but the telling of the book is about race, the colors are those of skin along with color obscured by fog, blindness and dreaming or sleep.

I argue that this book is ultimately not about the color of skin or race or stereotypes. It is about what is under that skin and that we cannot escape that. But that we accept life, and ourselves, for what it is.

There is a quote on from Tar Baby on this Goodreads page that begins "At some point..." I'd like to continue where it left off. "The world will always be there-while you sleep it will be there-when you wake it will be there as well. So you can sleep and there is a reason to wake. A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that. So the windows of the greenhouse can be opened and the weather let in. The latch on the door can be left unhooked, the muslin removed, for the soldier ants are beautiful too and whatever they do will be part of it."

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread

I remembered practically nothing from my first read of this (thirty years ago), so it was all fresh, though I did have Morrison’s comments about the folktale she was exploring (not retelling) in my head. In the version she heard growing up, the tar baby was female; the big implication being it was a Black seductress.

An obvious “tar baby” of the novel is Jadine, her real name insisted upon by Son, even as she is called Jade by her benefactors, friends, and in her career. Son insists on Yardman being called by his real name too (Gideon); the same with the true names of the indigenous women of the island who are dismissively called Mary by the colonizers. There’s an irony to this insistence as Son, a man on the run, has several fake identifications.

Jade is seduced by Son, as much as (or more than) the other way around. When he first enters her bedroom, though she is unaware of the intrusion, he is the one that smells like tar. The romantic scenes off the fictional Caribbean island and in New York might’ve been too much, but they’re needed for what comes next, in the small North Florida town Son is from then back in NYC when the relationship swings violent. At one point Son tries to warn Jade with the Tar Baby story, starting it with an emphasis on “the white farmer.” She threatens to kill him if he continues. The eyes of the ‘white farmer’ of Morrison’s novel are “without melanin” and his name is Valerian.

One of the most striking scenes is a fantastical one of Jade being sucked into tarry quicksand under trees on the island that also want to gather her in. No one has thrown her in the ‘briar patch;’ she has gone there willingly. She thinks she needs someone to help her out, but no one is nearby. What is the island trying to tell her? Is she now the rabbit? There’s no doubt who the rabbit is by the end of the book, and it’s not Jadine.

Morrison said all the characters in this book are looking for safety. I’d call it security, but it’s the same thing—a never-ending, elusive quest of imperfect beings who think they can find it in other imperfect beings.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

While considered in today’s racial climate a slur, the term “tar baby” originated in the stories of Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox as a metaphorical sticky situation that became worse the more one tried to get out of it. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/....)

Joel Chandler Harris, the author of a beloved children’s book from 1880 called “Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings” (the basis for the 1946 Disney film “Song of the South”, which has never been released on any format due to its racist portrayals of black folk), was a white journalist intrigued and fascinated by the folklore of former slaves. Many of the stories told to him were popular among slaves because they were thinly-veiled protest stories criticizing their white masters and the institution of slavery.

In 1981, Toni Morrison published the novel “Tar Baby”, a contemporary re-telling of the Uncle Remus story. Like Harris’s stories, Morrison’s novel is a fairy tale that is actually a thinly-veiled protest tale. Morrison, a 20th-century writer, isn’t criticizing slavery (although, in a sense, she is: a mental slavery that still afflicts many white and black people) but rather the deep-rooted racism and white privilege that keeps both whites and blacks in the U.S. enslaved in a position of apathy and lack of self-control.

The “tar baby” of Morrison’s novel is a man named Son, a black man who escapes from a ship to a Caribbean island, where a wealthy older white couple live in a huge mansion. He sneaks into the enormous house, initially for food and a place to sleep, but he ends up staying in the house for a week before finally being caught.

Mr. Valerian Street, the master of the house, rather than call the authorities, makes the fateful decision to invite Son to stay as a guest. Valerian seems to be taken in by the young man, but the other members of the household aren’t as excited.

Valerian’s wife, Margaret, is terrified of the young man, mostly for old-fashioned racist reasons. The staff—an older black couple, Sydney and his wife Ondine—-are troubled for practical reasons: they know nothing about this man, where he came from, what his motives are. Then there is Jadine, the beautiful black niece of Sydney and Ondine, who was essentially raised in the house by both couples. Jadine has experienced the benefits of the white wealthy world (Valerian paid her way through college) while still retaining her black heritage. She is frightened by Son for a variety of reasons but mostly because of the strong sexual attraction she has for him.

Son’s introduction into this world, like the allegorical tar baby, creates a downward spiral in which ancient resentments and hidden racist fears reveal themselves and threaten to topple a household that seemed perfect but, in reality, was far from it.

Morrison’s fascinating novel tackles the lies that men and women tell each other, and themselves, in marriages and friendships; the secret resentments that all employees have for their employers; the damaging traumas we, as parents, wittingly and unwittingly inflict on our children; the misguided and dangerous views that some black people have about education; and the vital importance of empathy and compassion in creating a better world.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book a lot. I have no clue about the ending, but otherwise I loved it (to the point where I don't even care). The scenes are so good. The drama. The rhetoric. The way she subverts all the tropes and plays on them. Just a fierce novel with so much mess!

[Monica **can't read fast enough** · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tar Baby was the #ReadSoulLit read along selection for this year and I am truly conflicted about how I felt about this story. Toni Morrison is not an author that writes stories that you can just blow through. It takes true concentration and thoughtfulness to work your way through one of her books. She will take her readers to some truly dark places and leave you to figure out a character's true motivation, which is a good thing.

Tar Baby of course explores themes of race and tensions among people of the same race through how we treat each other. Also, the acceptance of being treated less than because that is how you see yourself. The interactions among the characters are strange and their reasoning sometimes confusing.

I am still not sure how I feel about Tar Baby overall, but the ending is what did me in. I do not agree with the lack of action taken to protect a child at the end. I understand protecting yourself and wanting to stay out of the cross hairs of people that you know would be vindictive, but when children are involved I think that risks should be taken. There are two adult women who chose to not take action for very different reasons but they were both deal breakers for me.

Tar Baby is one that I am going to need to read several times before I can say that I understand most of what was presented, because right now I know that I don't. I'm sure that I didn't invest the amount of attention to the details that I should have. I really regret not participating in the discussion of this one, but I didn't feel at the time that my thoughts were coherent enough to even share!

Where you can find me:
•(♥).•*Monica Is Reading*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @monicaisreading
Instagram: @readermonica

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you don't think Toni Morrison is the greatest just go ahead and unfriend me because I don't like you and I want to fight you.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toni Morrison's Beauty and the Beast, complete with anthropomorphic details—but there's more to it than that. There's a candy tychoon, a greenhouse, a radio soap opera, a sealskin coat, and a craving for apples. There is a beauty and there is a beast, but there is also the Caribbean. Lush and green, harsh and gorgeous. And Christmas. And a family of rich white Americans full of ideas about who/what the black characters are or should be. Morrison explores the influence of whiteness on the black characters, as well as the influence that men and women exert on one another. What do men expect from women, and women from men? Is it all worth it in the end?

I have been looking for another literary Caribbean novel since reading Wide Sargasso Sea, and this one scratched that itch. It is probably Morrison's hottest novel—not words I ever thought I'd say—and anyone looking for a work of historical fiction will be sorely disappointed. Her prose, as always, is beautiful—Chapter 7 is an almost standalone masterpiece—but the words that come from the lips of her characters are never short of perfection. Every new Toni Morrison novel I finish becomes my favorite—this is no exception.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone knows that Beloved is Toni Morrison's most famous work, but I would argue that Tar Baby is better. There are so many relationships in this book and so many layers to each of those relationships. Love, sex, race, gender, class, ethnicity, even geography...there isn't much Morrison doesn't take on in this beautiful story. And, of course, there are always those heart-stopping passages that Morrison's writing never fails to produce. Tar Baby is an absolute must-read, and if you have the privilege of belonging to a book club (that isn't shy of a little sex), suggest this for your next book - I guarantee you will never want to stop discussing it.

[Taury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tar Baby Toni Morrison is a novel that looks at race, identity, power, and love, and challenges many ideas about these topics. It takes place in the Caribbean in the 1970s or 1980s. The story is about the relationship between Jadine Childs, an educated Black woman, and Son, a rebellious Black man who brings chaos into her life. Jadine was raised by a wealthy White couple and has a modern, Western way of seeing the world. Son, on the other hand, represents a simpler, more traditional lifestyle. Their relationship brings to attention issues, like class differences within the Black community, racism that comes from within, and the struggle of mixing two different ways of life. I liked the use of symbolism and African folklore in the book. The story moves between a Caribbean island and the cities of Florida and New York, bringing attention to wealth and class in the 1970s and 1980s. Morrison writes about how the characters deal with their personal and cultural pasts, exploring the need for freedom and a sense of belonging. The novel raises questions about what it means to be Black in a world influenced by colonization and Western culture.

[Arlene♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, there are some things that I'm still working out and I'm waiting for the rest of the book club to come together so I can get a better handle on the story. Right now, 3 stars, but I'm giving it room to grow upon considerable reflection.

[Amy Biggart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to round up because I really really liked this. With each new book I read by Toni Morrison I feel like she spins a fresh and riveting story that's deeply in conversation with race, class, politics, and colorism. It's just masterfully done.

Some things I particularly loved about the conversation in this book — Tar Baby is (to my knowledge) Toni Morrison's first book with prominent white characters, and I think the inclusion of them sets up a really interesting dynamic and conversation around privilege, class, and strategic benevolence (this is a term I may have just made up lol). Toni Morrison famously preferred writing about the intricacies of black life and black community over the dynamics between white and black characters, so this is a rarity and I think serves the book well.

At the center of this book is Jadine, an orphan whose aunt and uncle become her legal guardians. Her aunt and uncle work as the hired help for a wealthy white couple who left Philadelphia to move into a beautiful mansion in Dominique (Dominica). The wealthy white couple, The Streets, also took on the task of sponsoring Jadine's education, even going so far as to pay for her to travel to study in France, and sponsor some of her lifestyle when she gets into modeling in Europe.

This book kicks off when Jadine comes back to Dominique to stay with her aunt and uncle. It's this cast of characters that really ground the discussion of this book. Jadine moves into The Streets' house and lives as if she is a guest, whereas her aunt and uncle are relegated to servants' quarters, and even have to serve her dinner as she often eats with The Streets. This status quo is disrupted when a runaway named Son is discovered living on the property. The Streets similarly invite him to come into the same spaces as Jadine, which is when this story gets even more tense.

What blossoms from there is a romance between Jadine and Son that is complicated and tumultuous and exposes their very different thoughts on white people. This dichotomy is fascinating.

Son's adamant hatred of white people bumps up against Jadine's feelings of gratitude toward and friendship with The Streets. Their relationship easily starts to fracture under the pressure of their fundamentally different beliefs, beliefs around what she owes to her aunt and uncle, how they deserve to be treated by their employer, what it means to feel indebted to someone, how they value their family's roots.

There are other characters in this book that add even more layers to this conversation. A nephew and his aunt live on the property working as a yardman and a housekeeper. The Streets are estranged from their son Michael and anxiously await his potential return for the holidays.

In comparison to Toni Morrison's other books, this lacks some of the heavier and more in your face content warnings (no incest or pedophilia thank god). But this does have quite a bit of domestic violence (not too hard to read but present), particularly in the back half of the book. So very different from the four books I've read by her so far, but I think its one I'll be thinking about a lot.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

"O bir insan, beyaz bir adam değil. Beni okuttu o."

Bu sene başıma gelen en iyi şeylerden biri oldu Toni Morrison ile -geç de olsa- tanışmak. En kült kitaplarına yavaş yavaş varmak istediğim için biraz çeperde geziniyorum, farkındayım, hoşuma gidiyor böyle biraz ürkek davranmak. Sevilen'e, En Mavi Göz'e filan ulaştığımda Morrison'ı biraz tanıyor olmak istiyorum, ondan.

En popüler romanlarından biri olmayan Katran Bebek ile de bu amaç doğrultusunda buluştum ve bu kitabını da çok sevdim. Ne kadar katmanlı bir roman - ne kadar iyi örülmüş, ne kadar iyi sökülmüş, karakterler ne kadar iyi yazılmış. Korkuyu tarif etmek için birden fazla kez kullandığı "gümüş ayakları üstünde dörtnala koşan küçük, kara köpekler" tanımlaması - anlattığı gerilimi nasıl güçlendiren, nasıl kuvvetli bir imgedir o!

Kitap; yaşlılığını karısı Margaret ile beraber izbe bir adada geçiren zengin -ve beyaz- Valerian ile yıllardır onlara hizmet eden -siyah- karı-koca Sydney ve Ondine'in öyküsüyle başlıyor. Sonra anlatıya hizmetkâr çiftin yeğeni Jadine ile kanun kaçağı bir adam giriyor ve öyküye yepyeni katmanlar ekleniyor.

Irkçılık, Morrison'ın tüm kitaplarında olduğu gibi bu anlatıda da başrolde. Fakat Morrison'ı Morrison yapan bence ırkçılığın binbir biçimini ele alabilme kabiliyeti. Siyahların siyahları maruz bıraktığı ırkçılık da var örneğin bu kitapta. İşin içine sınıfı, toplumsal cinsiyet dinamiklerini ve gündelik iktidar pratiklerini de soktuğu için (ki bunları neredeyse her romanında ve hep büyük bir beceriyle yapıyor) konu hiçbir zaman bildiğimiz anlamda ırkçılık olmuyor, asla tek boyutlu kalmıyor. Katran Bebek de öyle. Bu çatının içine bir de aşk, annelik, yaşlılık gibi temalar giriyor, bunların hepsini birbiriyle öyle güzel dans ettiriyor ki. Böyle büyük konuları didaktikleşmeden, yormadan, insanın içine içine işleyerek anlatabilmek... Çok acayip bir kabiliyet sahiden.

Sırf herkesin masada oturduğu, öykünün büyük sırrının ortaya çıktığı o muazzam Noel yemeği bölümü için bile okunur bu kitap. 25 yıllık bir sırrı; o sır ifşa olurken ortaya saçılan ondan çok daha eski ve karakterlerin içlerine işlemiş suçları, günahları, ezberleri yazma biçimi... Üf yani.

Okuyunuz, bence.

[Mia · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Morrison's Tar Baby I felt slighted. Although I know that a perfect resolution is not required, I felt as though she left the primary characters' conflicts unresolved. Jadine and Son especially. Maybe I am a hopeless romantic and wished for them to make it, for their love to sustain them where ever they traveled, whether from Isle des Chevaliers, New York, Eloe to Paris. The situation on Isle des Chevaliers, at Valerian's house seemed a bit more tidied up. Morrison conveyed a sense of wholeness, a finished mood that gave the reader a clearer sense of the characters' fates. However, I think that the last scene was disappointing because it pushed us to another realm or surrealism that I find unattractive among Morrison's historically and racially rooted themes and subject matter. I felt the same sense of surrealistic cop-out in Song of Solomon when Milkman leaps to fly in the ultimate scene of the novel. Maybe I am misinterpreting Morrison's surreal metaphors, but I think I just much more enjoy and prefer a literal, tangible finale and conclusion. In spite of my negative opinion of the endings, I did thoroughly enjoy Tar Baby and Song of Solomon. Morrison's language and ability to seamlessly flow through a variety of characters during the course of the narration make for an intriguing, captivating story and a goodread. There are some lines of dialogue that are absolutely timeless and poignant. Morrison never fails to get me thinking, reflecting, and considering the social world in which we live. I love her for that uncanny ability to evoke social consciousness from her readers by using her characters' developments, understandings, and speech.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much any possible interaction between blacks and whites, rich and poor, man and woman, is played out in this novel - there are no real resolutions and some of the relationships are wildly overplayed, but overall this is an incredible piece of literature that I could see spending an entire semester on in college. It is basically the story of the rich white Valerian who retires to the Caribbean where his much younger wife broods over the absence of her college-aged son who is racked by white-guilt. Valerian employs a black butler and cook, as well as a yardman and washer - all of whom are uneducated, but still separated by class more than unified by race. The biracial niece of the butler and cook becomes a model and is educated at the Sorbonne through Valerian's money - and falls helpless in love with a shipwrecked illiterate from the South. The novel works through their complicated relationships - and at times tries to do a little too much. I always find Morrison's descriptive writing poetic - but in this one, I felt she captured the often awkward dialogue among the characters perfectly. For a thought-provoking work on race, class, and gender relations, it would be hard to go wrong with Tar Baby.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ooit, begin jaren '90, toen ik zowel boeken als jazz had ontdekt, kocht ik in een jeugdige opwelling een vertaling van Toni Morissons Jazz. Helaas was mijn neus voor literatuur toen nog niet evenredig ontwikkeld ten opzichte van mijn oor voor muziek. Ik begreep er weinig van en haakte al na enkele pagina's af. Intussen weet ik dat dat boek eigenlijk onvertaalbaar was, precies omwille van de muzikale taal waarmee Toni Morisson jazz in de breedste zin van het woord wilde laten klinken. Ook deze Tar Baby kent, zo las ik in het nawoord, de nodige vertaal-issues die verder reiken dan onze hedendaagse omgang met bv. het n-woord. Het is trouwens een nagelnieuwe vertaling (2023) van de meesterlijke hand van Nicolette Hoekmeijer.

Ook de roman zelf - mijn eerste échte Morrison dus - blaakt van het talige meesterschap. Al na enkele pagina's raakte ik onder de indruk van de kracht van haar zinnen en van haar heel eigen stijl die me duidelijk maakte dat ik me als witte lezer geen illusies hoefde te maken. Dit boek is in de eerste plaats geschreven voor zwarte lezers, ook al zorgt Morrisons métier ervoor dat haar thema's altijd gelijke tred houden met de intrige. Ze heeft de touwtjes ook qua compositie stevig in handen. Enkel de personages lijken soms nogal wispelturig gekarakteriseerd.

Het hoofdthema is hier duidelijk racisme. Soms expliciet maar meestal onderhuids aanwezig en als een complex, maar tegelijk ragfijn web uitgesponnen. Het beperkt zich ook niet tot de kolonialistische houding van witte suprematie, maar toont net zo goed het omgekeerde en het onderlinge racisme bij zowel zwarte als witte mensen. Toch is het onmiskenbaar een zwarte stem die in een ongrijpbare, beeldende taal van maskerades en magische natuurelementen de problematiek aan de kaart stelt.

Ook de intrige is complex, omdat de verhoudingen tussen de personages, de verhalen en de geheimen, het verklappen en het verzwijgen, het al dan niet uitspreken van wat men denkt en de innerlijke worstelingen en tegenstrijdigheden hen tot speelbal maken van hun eigen rol in samenspel met de anderen. Bij heel wat scènes kreeg ik trouwens het gevoel een theaterstuk te lezen. Daar leent deze roman zich volgens mij perfect voor, niet in het minst omdat Toni Morisson veel met dialogen werkt, maar ook omdat de settings en dan vooral de cruciale kersttafelscène zo op de planken gespeeld kan worden.

Naast het feit dat dit weer zo'n fijne uitgave van de Perpetua-reeks was, werd ook mijn literaire honger flink gestild en wil ik bijgevolg nog wel enkele andere pareltjes van Toni Morrison ontdekken. Jazz wordt er daar eentje van (in het Engels deze keer), maar alle tips zijn vanaf nu welkom.

[Deja Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

My personal opinion on the book? Well, I believe that the book was terrible and I would not recommend this book to anyone. I say that because the book was altogether irrelevant and I did not understand why it was written. To add fuel to the fire, it was boring. There was no action whatsoever and the first few chapters of the book was meaningless. If I had to give the book a rating out of 5 stars, I would literally give it a 1 star. I would give it that because at least she tried to write something. Other than that, the book itself was horrible. It was kind of difficult to read at first, but as I kept on, I began to understand the language based on the time period. If I could, I would change a lot about the book. I would make the book have more action and a deeper meaning. The book lacked a lot of things including a theme in my opinion. I did not understand the message that Toni Morrison was trying to convey to her readers. Overall, I did not enjoy this book. If I were you, I wouldn’t pick up this novel, but hey if you like reading boring books and need something to knock you out, here is your nyquil.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

she doesn’t miss

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not exactly a review. It is more of a story about my reading of Tar Baby.

I have read all the novels of Toni Morrison, though I read the early ones out of publication order. Now I am reading them again from first to last. Each time, I find more to understand and enjoy. I first read Tar Baby in 2001, when it was already 20 years old. Now it is over 40 years old. I am a much better reader now than I was in 2001, though I was just as enthusiastic back then. I think there is good reason to read over one's head and outside of what one is used to or comfortable with.

In any case, according to my reading log I found it "a great story with great dialogue, overall a page-turner." It appears I got the main plot points. When I started it this time, it seemed like I had never read it before.

In her forward to the Vintage reprint I read this time, Toni Morrison mentions the well known Brer Rabbit tale. Oh! Of course. So all the time I read, I was noticing who was Tar Baby, who was Fox, who was Rabbit.

I recently read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and I found many parallels in Tar Baby, not just because the opening setting was in the Caribbean but in subject matter and in the women of the two books. I understood more fully this time the conflicts between classes, races, Natives and White intruders. I mourned for both Jadine and her wild lover Son when she made her final decisions about their love and her personal goals.

There are many Black writers I admire and respect but in my opinion most of them owe much to both James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, both of whom understood the source, the particulars and the intricate web of racism in America better and wrote about it better than anyone else.