A Past Not Pure but Stifled

In this essay, I argue that Toni Morrison's Love is in the tradition of texts such as Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Alice Walker's Meridian, and Charles Johnson's Dreamer in that it is a reevaluation of the civil rights movement and a meditation on the long-lasting consequences of civil rights struggles in African American communities. My analysis foregrounds the novel's indictment of paternalistic leadership figures, such as Bill Cosey and Fruit, illustrating that the consequences of their destructive behavior are insidious and far-reaching. In that way, I argue that Love is as much a commentary on the civil rights era as it is on the post-civil rights, 9/11 era in which it was published. Thus, I contend that Morrison's project in Love is both about reconciling nostalgia with a recognition of the horrors of the past and about considering, albeit ambivalently, how best to understand the present. Ultimately, my analysis suggests that Love illuminates our understanding of black leadership and the civil rights movement throughout the twentieth century by engaging the long-lasting and often problematic legacy of civil rights struggles in black communities

Civil rights · Indictment · Political science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Music History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society

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