Apr 17

Apr 17 Paradise

Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Vintage (first published 1997)
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

“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.

In prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem, Toni Morrison challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present.

TL;DR Thoughts

Toni does it again. Paradise is an aching novel filled with so, so much: beautiful friendship and terrible violence, the power of community and danger of exclusion, tension between legacy and forging a new future.

For you if: You love Toni Morrison novels. This one brings it all, again.

Full Thoughts

I am slowly but surely making my way through all of Toni Morrison’s novels, in order. So this is my seventh of hers. Maybe it’s recency bias, but I do think it’s among my favorites so far. How does she manage to do so much, so quietly, so explosively?

This book starts with the infamous first line, “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” Convinced that the women living together in an old convent are the source of the all-Black town’s growing problems, a group of men set out to “take care of” them. Then we go back in time, learning more about each of the women and a good handful of key characters in town, plus how things got to this boiling point.

There’s just so much explored in this novel, and it’s done achingly, precisely, and beautifully. There’s beautiful friendship and terrible violence, the power of community and danger of exclusion, tension between legacy and forging a new future, and much more. As she does in pretty much all of her novels, Morrison asks big questions about Black women living life on their own terms, Black men seeking to control them, and the rest of the world punishing them all.