Toni Morrison and bell hooks Represent Blacks in American Literature :: Biography Biographies Essays

Toni Morrison and bell hooks Represent Blacks in American Literature    Two widely know and influential authors, bell hooks and Toni Morrison, share similar beliefs and themes with regards to the black community.  One theme in particular that the two writers emphasize is the representation of blacks in American literary works today.  hooks feels that African Americans are misrepresented, where Morrison believes that blacks are not represented at all.  hooks evidence of this theme is portrayed primarily in the sexist and racialist representations the characters exhibit.  Overall, both authors feel that the negative portrayal of the black community needs to stop in order for a pause instinct of our national literature.    Toni Morrison believes that the literature in America has taken as its concern the whitened man as its character base.  Morrison states, American literature is free of, uniformed by, and unshaped by the four-hund red-year-old presence of the first Africans (205).  She believes the entire history of the African culture has had no important place in the present state of our cultures literature.  The American literature distinct today tends to depict the white males views, genius, and power leaving out all concerns for the black race.  Morrison is convinced that, the contemplation of the black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be relegated to the margins of the literary imagination (205-06).  Morrisons quote stresses the importance of the representation of black presence in todays literature for a better national comprehension of this writing.    Two primary reasons Morrison believes that blacks are left out are the writers themselves, and the silence that has historically ruled literature.  She believes, National literatures, like writers, get on as best they can and with what they can. Yet they do seem to end up describing and inscribing what is really on the national mind (208).  This is the interest in the white man.  Writers produce, and companies publish what the public wants to read about.  According to Morrison, this is not the black presence, rather views and interests in the white man.  The other reason she believes blacks are left out are, that in matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse (207).