Jazz by Morrison, Toni

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.

"As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." --Glamour

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 novel "transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious" (People).

"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women." --The New York Times Book Review


Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 06/08/2004
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.59lbs
Size: 8.08h x 5.16w x 0.64d
ISBN: 9781400076215

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6
Point Value: 11
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 68894 / Jazz


Review Citation(s):
Ebony 09/01/2004 pg. 30

About the Author
Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.