Toni Morrison¹s latest novel a mercy is a raw, powerful, and terrifying book. In it, Morrison unleashes an agoraphobic vision of colonial America, a space of constant negotiation (spatially, politically, and pragmatically) and hostility, in which life is brutish and short. The text takes as it starting point the twin horrors that underlie the foundation of the nation: the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of the Native Americans. It does not stop there, though, as Morrison is at pains to also show the tenuous lives of a host of characters who are marginal: those who suffered
under indentured servitude; gay men; orphans; prostitutes; foundlings; widows. In creating the scope of her novel this way, Morrison pens a rich and unspoken history of America, all while maintaining a sense of the very personal and private tragedies that inform the lives of her characters. The lawless and crassly commercial world of colonial America is a space in which individuals are constantly confined to their worth as commodities, but more than this, the text is a subtle and sensuous exploration of the violence of capitalism.
The scope of the text is ambitious enough and this alone makes it worth reading. But when we add to this Morrison¹s unparalleled skill, we have a novel the reverberates and echoes with a fierce and haunting language. This is word made flesh made poetry made prose. This is a book that leaps off the page and gently buries itself in the throat and the heart. It is a text of extraordinary grace, fear, and sacrifice.
~By: Dr. Lorna L. Perez~
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