A Year of Toni Morrison: Paradise

Poet Sonia Sanchez said of her friend Toni Morrison, “In order to survive, you should re-read Toni every ten years because every ten or 15 years, we have to re-imagine ourselves on this American landscape. You won’t survive if you don’t do that.” We believe now is the time. Join us on a year-long journey through Toni Morrison’s remarkable literary legacy.

Join the conversation on Sunday, June 21st at 2pm as we discuss, “Paradise.”

About Paradise:

“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage.

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Host or Publisher Kindred Thoughts Book Club