SCOPE: First published in 1974, MELUS is a quarterly journal featuring articles, interviews, and reviews encompassing the multi-ethnic scope of American literature, past and present. Most issues are thematically organized for greater understanding of topics. For more information on submissions, see the Submission Information on the final page of this issue.
{"title":"Journal Information","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab047","url":null,"abstract":"<span><strong>SCOPE:</strong> First published in 1974, <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">MELUS</span> is a quarterly journal featuring articles, interviews, and reviews encompassing the multi-ethnic scope of American literature, past and present. Most issues are thematically organized for greater understanding of topics. For more information on submissions, see the Submission Information on the final page of this issue.</span>","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"197 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138536299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Although a number of scholars have tackled the figure of the Black folk-healer in Toni Morrison’s novels, the character deserves greater attention in the present moment for the insights she provides into two contemporary catastrophes: the coronavirus pandemic and the structural racism that precipitates rampant violence against brown-skinned people in the United States. Beginning with M’Dear, the elderly woman who is brought in to treat Cholly’s Aunt Jimmy in The Bluest Eye (1970), I survey descriptions of several root workers, hoodoo practitioners, and midwives in Morrison’s fiction, including Ajax’s mother in Sula (1973) and Milkman’s aunt Pilate in Song of Solomon (1977). Morrison’s portraits of these women and their communities capture the endurance of African folk customs, the undervalued knowledge of aged members of society, and a sense of Black women’s strength beyond that of the physical, laboring, or hypersexual body. The fictional experiences of Morrison’s healers also alert readers to the very real injustices that have historically impeded the successes of African Americans—and continue to hamper them, as has been exposed during the COVID-19 crisis and public outrages over police brutality. These injustices include inequities in lifelong earning potential, education, housing, and access to healthcare. Paying closer attention to the Nobel Laureate’s root-working women makes her novels more than simply “transformative” and “empowering” for individual readers; analyzing these figures allows one to unearth important critiques of medical bias and other forms of discrimination against marginalized members of society—disparities that must be dismantled in the push for social change.
{"title":"Getting to the Root of US Healthcare Injustices through Morrison’s Root Workers","authors":"G. Anatol","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab053","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although a number of scholars have tackled the figure of the Black folk-healer in Toni Morrison’s novels, the character deserves greater attention in the present moment for the insights she provides into two contemporary catastrophes: the coronavirus pandemic and the structural racism that precipitates rampant violence against brown-skinned people in the United States. Beginning with M’Dear, the elderly woman who is brought in to treat Cholly’s Aunt Jimmy in The Bluest Eye (1970), I survey descriptions of several root workers, hoodoo practitioners, and midwives in Morrison’s fiction, including Ajax’s mother in Sula (1973) and Milkman’s aunt Pilate in Song of Solomon (1977). Morrison’s portraits of these women and their communities capture the endurance of African folk customs, the undervalued knowledge of aged members of society, and a sense of Black women’s strength beyond that of the physical, laboring, or hypersexual body. The fictional experiences of Morrison’s healers also alert readers to the very real injustices that have historically impeded the successes of African Americans—and continue to hamper them, as has been exposed during the COVID-19 crisis and public outrages over police brutality. These injustices include inequities in lifelong earning potential, education, housing, and access to healthcare. Paying closer attention to the Nobel Laureate’s root-working women makes her novels more than simply “transformative” and “empowering” for individual readers; analyzing these figures allows one to unearth important critiques of medical bias and other forms of discrimination against marginalized members of society—disparities that must be dismantled in the push for social change.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"22 1","pages":"186 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87878139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The call and response protest chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!” that echo throughout city streets in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests and marches illustrate one of many ways in which US streets have been reclaimed and repurposed, particularly against police violence against brown and Black bodies. The street’s capacity to function as a site of converging, colliding, and contradicting perspectives and ideologies also functions as a rich, nuanced lens for reading literature. Proceeding from Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework that space is “fundamental to any exercise of power,” I read the representation of early twentieth-century Harlem and its network of streets in Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992) as sites of “contradictory possibilities.” In Jazz, I argue, the street becomes a character unto itself: an artery that facilitates a sense of community, belonging, and play while simultaneously revealing tensions and temptations and harboring violence. These streets are also Black spaces, in stark contrast to the “dollar-wrapped fingers” of whiteness that poke and prod south of 110th street. As such, whiteness is physically decentered, allowing for the complexity of Black life to be explored in its movements in, through, and around the city streets. Building on Edward Soja's theory of “third space”—a combination of material and imaginative worlds—I argue that the novel opens up new possibilities for reclaiming the material street as a site where institutionalized violence and the systemic racism that feeds it can be subversively resisted.
{"title":"Reclaiming the Street in Toni Morrison’s Jazz","authors":"Alexandra Smith","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlac003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlac003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The call and response protest chants of “Whose streets? Our streets!” that echo throughout city streets in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests and marches illustrate one of many ways in which US streets have been reclaimed and repurposed, particularly against police violence against brown and Black bodies. The street’s capacity to function as a site of converging, colliding, and contradicting perspectives and ideologies also functions as a rich, nuanced lens for reading literature. Proceeding from Michel Foucault’s theoretical framework that space is “fundamental to any exercise of power,” I read the representation of early twentieth-century Harlem and its network of streets in Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992) as sites of “contradictory possibilities.” In Jazz, I argue, the street becomes a character unto itself: an artery that facilitates a sense of community, belonging, and play while simultaneously revealing tensions and temptations and harboring violence. These streets are also Black spaces, in stark contrast to the “dollar-wrapped fingers” of whiteness that poke and prod south of 110th street. As such, whiteness is physically decentered, allowing for the complexity of Black life to be explored in its movements in, through, and around the city streets. Building on Edward Soja's theory of “third space”—a combination of material and imaginative worlds—I argue that the novel opens up new possibilities for reclaiming the material street as a site where institutionalized violence and the systemic racism that feeds it can be subversively resisted.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"1 1","pages":"115 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77272709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Toni Morrison’s 1999 book The Big Box, coauthored with her son, Slade Morrison, depicts three children who are locked up because they “just can’t handle [their] freedom.” Ostensibly written for children, the text nonetheless engages issues of sociopolitical power, authority, and justice which affect readers of all ages, challenging them to reconsider the terms of freedom by which we operate. In this way, the book channels issues and themes central to Morrison’s oeuvre, including the many works of nonfiction in which she explores the dynamics of violence and power in the United States and our global community. Indeed, the book’s prescient central refrain is particularly relevant to our contemporary moment as we confront the persisting dis-ease concerning Black and brown bodies in the United States and our ongoing struggle to ensure “freedom and justice for all”.This essay positions The Big Box as a lens through which we may read Morrison’s nonfiction meditations on the tensions between freedom, authority, justice, and power in the United States. Combining various essays in recent publications such as The Source of Self-Regard (2019) and The Origin of Others (2017) with other pieces of Morrison’s nonfiction, this essay explores how The Big Box channels Morrison’s broader concerns about freedom and justice in the United States that continue to resonate today.
{"title":"“It’s Not My Freedom or Free”: The Big Box and Toni Morrison’s Meditations on Violence, Justice, and Power","authors":"Lauren M. Brown","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Toni Morrison’s 1999 book The Big Box, coauthored with her son, Slade Morrison, depicts three children who are locked up because they “just can’t handle [their] freedom.” Ostensibly written for children, the text nonetheless engages issues of sociopolitical power, authority, and justice which affect readers of all ages, challenging them to reconsider the terms of freedom by which we operate. In this way, the book channels issues and themes central to Morrison’s oeuvre, including the many works of nonfiction in which she explores the dynamics of violence and power in the United States and our global community. Indeed, the book’s prescient central refrain is particularly relevant to our contemporary moment as we confront the persisting dis-ease concerning Black and brown bodies in the United States and our ongoing struggle to ensure “freedom and justice for all”.This essay positions The Big Box as a lens through which we may read Morrison’s nonfiction meditations on the tensions between freedom, authority, justice, and power in the United States. Combining various essays in recent publications such as The Source of Self-Regard (2019) and The Origin of Others (2017) with other pieces of Morrison’s nonfiction, this essay explores how The Big Box channels Morrison’s broader concerns about freedom and justice in the United States that continue to resonate today.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"29 1","pages":"14 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83078986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture. Koritha Mitchell","authors":"Kerstin Rudolph","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab051","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81124962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Toni Morrison’s Home (2012) takes up issues of (anti-)Blackness, eugenics, and the healing powers of communities of Black women. In the novel, Cee, the protagonist’s sister, is hired as a “helper” (explicitly not a “nurse”) for a white eugenicist. Cee is essentially incarcerated at the doctor’s home office, where she is reduced to a sort of living cadaver upon whom the doctor experiments, leaving her unable to bear children. Upon being rescued from the doctor, Cee is nurtured back to health by a community of lay Black women in the South. Morrison’s novel critiques a history of anti-Black racism in the medical field that has situated Black persons (especially Black women) as particularly susceptible to abuse, malpractice, and incomplete or nonexistent care. I situate my discussion of Home alongside an exploration of forced sterilizations of incarcerated Black and Latinx women in US corrections facilities to illustrate Morrison’s illumination of historical and ongoing racial injustices in the entangled US medical, legal, and military systems. This essay explores the modes by which communities of Black women practice an ethics of care for one another and collectively resist anti-Black biopolitical systems. In taking on the role of healers, the Black women in this novel deny white attempts at control over Black persons’ bodies, lives, and reproduction. Morrison’s novel instead presents a move toward Black liberation, care, and safety that sets the stage for thinking about contemporary health and legal issues—namely anti-Black racism and the disproportionality of negative outcomes for Black persons in US medical systems.
{"title":"”Nothing Made Them Change Their Minds about the Medical Industry”: Medical Abuse, Incarceration, and Healing in Toni Morrison’s Home","authors":"Patrick S. Allen","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Toni Morrison’s Home (2012) takes up issues of (anti-)Blackness, eugenics, and the healing powers of communities of Black women. In the novel, Cee, the protagonist’s sister, is hired as a “helper” (explicitly not a “nurse”) for a white eugenicist. Cee is essentially incarcerated at the doctor’s home office, where she is reduced to a sort of living cadaver upon whom the doctor experiments, leaving her unable to bear children. Upon being rescued from the doctor, Cee is nurtured back to health by a community of lay Black women in the South. Morrison’s novel critiques a history of anti-Black racism in the medical field that has situated Black persons (especially Black women) as particularly susceptible to abuse, malpractice, and incomplete or nonexistent care. I situate my discussion of Home alongside an exploration of forced sterilizations of incarcerated Black and Latinx women in US corrections facilities to illustrate Morrison’s illumination of historical and ongoing racial injustices in the entangled US medical, legal, and military systems. This essay explores the modes by which communities of Black women practice an ethics of care for one another and collectively resist anti-Black biopolitical systems. In taking on the role of healers, the Black women in this novel deny white attempts at control over Black persons’ bodies, lives, and reproduction. Morrison’s novel instead presents a move toward Black liberation, care, and safety that sets the stage for thinking about contemporary health and legal issues—namely anti-Black racism and the disproportionality of negative outcomes for Black persons in US medical systems.","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"35 1","pages":"138 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87259647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-93722-5
{"title":"Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Multi-Disease, Multi-View, and Multi-Center Right Ventricular Segmentation in Cardiac MRI Challenge: 12th International Workshop, STACOM 2021, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2021, Strasbourg, France, September 27, 2021, Revised Selected Pap","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/978-3-030-93722-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93722-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73206875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite. Rodrigo Lazo","authors":"Daniella Cádiz Bedini","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82811657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Writing across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920. Lucas A. Dietrich","authors":"Allison Fagan","doi":"10.1093/melus/mlab049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlab049","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44959,"journal":{"name":"MELUS","volume":"188 1","pages":"243-245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138536308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：