Author Study: Jazz by Toni Morrison

Folio invites you to delve deeply into the life and craft of the extraordinary Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

In the last session of 2020 we will be reading Jazz. In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.

This program is FREE and open to everyone in the community, we encourage you to join us and share it with friends and family!

About the Author

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, exquisite language and richly detailed African American characters who are central to their narratives. Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love and A Mercy. Morrison has earned a plethora of book-world accolades and honorary degrees, also receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Novels in this Study:

The Bluest Eye (1969)

Sula (1971)

Song of Solomon (1977)

Tar Baby (1981)

Beloved (1987)

Jazz (1992)

Paradise (1997)

Love (2003)

A Mercy (2008)

Home (2012)

God Help The Child (2015)