The Reader May Know Their Names: Intersectional Representation in Song of Solomon Andrew Cowan College

Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon is easily one of her best-selling novels and is often credited as contributing to her winning the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. However, despite its popularity Song of Solomon is in many ways radically different than other work Morrison has produced. As scholar Wilhelm Bertens points out, “Ever since her first novel . . . she has set herself apart… by portraying and celebrating unique, powerful voices of the marginalized women from American history and contemporary American life” (Bertens 115). While the majority of books Toni Morrison has published feature black women as protagonists, Song of Solomon, which is arguably one of her most famous works, features a black man as the protagonist, which represents a noteworthy departure from her typical form. Although the novel does not feature a black woman as the primary protagonist however, in writing a novel that features a male protagonist, Morrison effectively communicates the intersectional oppression black women suffer not only through the text, but through the very structure of the novel.

Before the novel even begins, Morrison firmly establishes that women in the novel, and by extension society, are marginalized. The epigraph of the...