Tar Baby
- Dec 27, 2020
- 1 min read
★★★★★
Class, race, gender and sexuality, privilege and power: Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby has it all. This is the story of Son and Jadine, star-crossed lovers from opposite backgrounds—his impoverished, hers affluent and entitled—of the wealthy Streets who have made her life possible, of Nadine and Sydney, Jadine’s aunt and uncle who work as domestic servants for the Streets, and of the way Son’s arrival at the Street’s Caribbean estate shatters the illusions and self-deceptions under which the rest of them had been living. Morrison has crafted a powerful and unflinching story, both strikingly intimate and vastly universal, that tackles colossal issues and themes and confronts and forces the reader to think deeply about them, and, most spectacularly, never sacrifices the readability of the story or page-turning pleasure of her writing. That is no small feat. Tar Baby is my first Toni Morrison; it will not be my last.
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