Reading Reproductive Justice Through Toni Morrison

Abstract

Considered by many scholars to rank among the best writers of her generation, Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was the author of eleven novels and was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1993). As a novelist of the “black experience” (as the New York Times obituary named her—although others would argue that this racialization is limiting), Morrison’s work offers a useful lens through which to examine reproductive justice. Interpreting her novels as cultural productions engaged with material concerns illuminates the inextricability of reproduction to any vision of a just society. Morrison’s invocation of America centers the experience of Black women and girls; her work lays bare the crucial need for a reframed approach recognizing that legal rights are not enough if economic, racial, and other conditions deny equitable access. The prevalence of dead mothers, abandoned children, abortions, miscarriages, and births cannot be separated from the social conditions Morrison describes from the 1670s to the 2010s.