Discover Essay SummaryAfrican American Writers
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Sweetness, Madness and Power: The Confection as mental Contagion in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye, written by Dayle B. Delancey, published in The journal of African American and African Diaporan Literature and culture V. 2 in Spring 2000, provides insight towards an African American writer, Toni Morrison's writing style in three of her popular novels. Delancey focuses on how Morrison reframes from directly using the "white world" in her novels about predominantly black communities. She also explores the psychological issues that the white community can bring upon the black community.
Delancey describes how Morrison doesn't use the white community directly in her novels, instead she uses metaphoric representation of the damage whites have on the black community. For example, Morrison tends to use "sweet" as a metaphor for burdens of the white community, which in turn causes psychological damage.
Delancey uses Morrison's novel Tar Baby, which doesn't use the metaphor of sweet to bring on mental issues, to help provide a clearer understanding of Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye. Tar baby is about a white man named Valerian Street whose candy business is ruining the black community because poor blacks are the chief consumers of his candy. Delancey show how the sugar trade had a negative outcome on black slaves harvesting it and the sugar from Street's candy store is bringing back the same affects: striping raw material and exploiting black labor...