Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Helena Maragou (Deree-The American College of Greece)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.5: African American Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Philathia Bolton (University of Akron), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2008

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Toni Morrison’s ninth novel,

A Mercy

(2008, Knopf), unfolds in 1682-1690 Virginia and Maryland and dramatizes the lives of a diverse array of characters whose different and simultaneously interlocked experiences of uprootedness and migration construct a compact narrative of life in the colonial settlements during a period when America was still “ad hoc territory” (

11). Contingent, precarious and fluid, America as the author re-imagines it is far removed from idealizing scripts of the New World as a pristine land of plenty in which English settlers were called upon to fulfill their historic destiny; Morrison’s colonial America is “a mess” (

8), infiltrated by people of different nations and conflicting interests, representing competing religious sects and struggling to…

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4937 words

Citation: Maragou, Helena. "A Mercy". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=25843, accessed 24 April 2024.]

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