In this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni
Morrison created a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances
of black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking
use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in
contemporary fiction.
Song of Solomon begins with one of the most arresting scenes in
our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a man
poised on a roof, about to fly into the air, while cloth rose
petals swirl above the snow-covered ground and, in the astonished
crowd below, one woman sings as another enters premature labor. The
child born of that labor, Macon (Milkman) Dead, will eventually
come to discover, through his complicated progress to maturity, the
meaning of the drama that marked his birth. Toni Morrison's novel
is at once a romance of self-discovery, a retelling of the black
experience in America that uncovers the inalienable poetry of that
experience, and a family saga luminous in its depth, imaginative
generosity, and universality. It is also a tribute to the ways in
which, in the hands of a master, the ancient art of storytelling
can be used to make the mysterious and invisible aspects of human
life apparent, real, and firm to the touch.