Toni Morrison

Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity.--from...

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose...

A searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult.

In this 1983 short story about race and the relationships that shape us through life, Twyla and Roberta, friends since childhood who are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem as they grow older, cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. After losing touch, they meet several times by accident. Seemingly...

The late Bill Cosey, one-time owner of the Cosey Hotel and Resort, a hot spot for vacationing African-Americans, is kept alive through the memories of the women he loved and who were loved by him.

Nine men from Ruby Oklahoma, in defense of the one all-black town worth the pain, assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void out there where random and organized evil erupted when and where it chose.

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book is a powerful collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves.

As Americans we often take our freedom of speech for granted. When we talk about censorship we talk about China, the former Soviet Union, or the Middle East. But recent political developments—including

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Children spend the day with their grandmother, who ignores their mother's carefully planned schedule in favor of activities that are much more fun.

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Nel and Sula’s devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the...