Responses to Toni Morrison's "Sweetness"

Re: Toni Morrison's "Sweetness"

Toni Morrison, in this excerpt "Sweetness", tells the story of a light skinned woman so ashamed of her daughter's dark complexion that she raises with a cold shoulder and the two become estranged. Morrison not only highlights the issue of colorism in the black community but the tension created in relationships between children and parents who act distant. This reader hopes that readers who are parents and children alike will take heed and avoid developing such relationships.

Zari Taylor
University of Virginia

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Ms. Morrison,

Each time you write about the position of race and skin color, why is it only for black women?

Questions for Kincaid and Morrison:

• Why is the relationship between black mothers and black daughters always a disaster?
• Why do black women in literature always accept the injustice in the world?
• Why do black women authors never write about present-day sexuality, injustice, womanhood? Or acknowledge that the world is changing when writing about relationships?

Miela Fetaw,
Milwaukee, WI
Friday, June 17, 2016

Related:
• AALCI 2016