![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/toni-morrison-04.jpg\")
Beloved, adapted for film in 1998, helped open up the literary canon.Touchstone Pictures\/Photofest<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\nMorrison\u2019s depiction of women, of motherhood, of misogyny, of hatred and self-hatred within and around race constitutes the foundation of her genius as a writer and thinker. Nearly all Morrison\u2019s protagonists are women whose identities and narrative trajectories fill entire fictional universes. A universe of women emerges most clearly in Paradise<\/em>, in the community of lost and broken women who come together in the Convent and heal themselves, free of men\u2019s oversight. The women in the Convent are Othered through race, but as women, they create their own belonging, which proves their undoing. Free women enrage the men of Ruby, whose \u201cpure oil of hatred\u201d clarifies the \u201cvenom\u201d they feel towards them. Bent on murder, the men attack with \u201crope, a palm leaf cross, handcuffs, Mace and sunglasses, along with clean, handsome guns.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe Origin of Others<\/em> combines Toni Morrison\u2019s accustomed eloquence with meaning for our times as citizens of the world. But the breadth of her humanist imagination emerges most gloriously from her magnificent fiction, in which women play leading roles, in which social and racial identities influence but never determine individual character; her novels guide our understanding of how both race and gender inflect experience without diminishing psychological uniqueness. Although her lectures and the race-centered tradition of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates are crucial to understanding her thought, they cannot contain her extraordinary vision of human Othering and belonging.<\/span><\/p>\nNell Irvin Painter<\/strong> is the Edwards professor of American history,\u00a0emerita, at Princeton University, where she directed the Program\u00a0in African American Studies. She is the author of numerous books,\u00a0including\u00a0The History of White People<\/i>, Standing at Armageddon:\u00a0<\/i>A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era,<\/i> and Creating\u00a0<\/i>Black Americans.\u00a0<\/i>
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/new-republic-logo.jpg\"){kind=logo}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/toni-morrison-01-768x1024.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/toni-morrison-02.jpg\")