Paradise

Paradise is a 1997 novel by Toni Morrison, and her first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. According to the author, it completes a "trilogy" that begins with Beloved and includes Jazz.

It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection January 1998. Interestingly, Morrison wanted to call the novel War but was overridden by her editor.^[1]

The novel tells the story of the tension between the men of Ruby, Oklahoma (an all-black town^[2] founded in 1950) and a group of women who lived in a former convent seventeen miles away. After an opening chapter named after the town, the other chapters are named after some of the female characters, but are not simply about the women. Each chapter includes flashbacks to crucial events from the town's history in addition to the backstory of the titular character. The women in the Convent are Connie (Consolata), Mavis, Gigi (Grace), Seneca, and Pallas (Divine). These women all receive chapters. The townswomen who receive chapters are Pat (Patricia), Lone and Save-Marie. The focus on the women characters highlights the ways the novel portrays the gender differences between the patriarchal rigidity of the townsmen and the clandestine connections between the townswomen and the women at the Convent. The narration serves as an alternative voice to the actions in which the townsmen provide.

References

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