Toni Morrison: Nobel Lecture

Narrative memory, language and the afterlives of slavery. Distinguish a character’s recollection, a narrator’s arrangement and a historical claim.

How to study this source

• How does a story make memory present without making it a simple record?

  coreOpening third of the Nobel Lecture; record the argument rather than the award biography.

  Narrative memory, language and the afterlives of slavery. Distinguish a character’s recollection, a narrator’s arrangement and a historical claim.

Ideas and questions

Read background definitions when a term blocks the argument. Then return to the source and reconstruct its claim in your own words.

Read alongside, read against