I haven’t started the book yet but thought it might be interesting to provide a little back ground on the book and its author.
What’s it about:
Song of Solomon is a 1977 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American male living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood.
This book won the National Books Critics Award, was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, and was cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature.
Tidbits on the author:
- Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931.
- As a child she read constantly and her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.
- In college she wrote her thesis on suicides of famous authors.
- She worked as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House.
- She won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved.
- She got divorced in the 1960’s when divorce was less common.
- In 1998 while writing about Bill Clinton’s impeachment she wrote he had been mistreated because of his “Blackness”. She was the first to call Clinton a black President.
For those more interested in trivialities, the book is 337 pages long.
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2 Response to Song of Solomon - Intro
ah ! i read this book two years ago, but i wasn't sure if i actually finished it. i peeled through your notes above and remembered all those details. so i looked up a summary, and i think i finished reading it. my mind is just so fuzzy sometimes.
i recall that macon had a lot of resentment toward his mother for the late-breast feeding she continued. but he didn't know any better, and i'm sure he felt strange saying anything about it to his mother because you know, she as the authority figure above him and all. but she obviously had her own clear set of issues for why she raised him so long on the milk. oh psychology.
i wanted to try to read all of her books ever, but so far i've only read two, and she has quite a list. i bought her last book last year, "a mercy," but i never got far into it and hoped to soon. it was the only book she's ever written from the perspective of slavery period, way back when. i remember reading some pretty gruesome passages about bodies being thrown over ships crossing the ocean to america, before i abandoned the book to my shelves.
Nice :) Looks like an intertesting book must take a glance at it for sure.
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