"Loud withe presence of plants and field life": The Ecology of Resistance in Toni Morison's _Tar Baby_

Abstract

Tar Baby occupies a peculiar place in Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s oeuvre. Following the epic Song of Solomon and preceding her masterwork, Beloved, Tar Baby has received little critical engagement. This article posits that the critics’ discomfort with Tar Baby lies in the fact that the politics of the novel are largely encoded in, and voiced by, the nonhuman world. After reading the natural world as the primary, though not exclusive, vehicle of postcolonial resistance in the novel, this article maintains that given the current interest in ecocritical reading, Tar Baby deserves to be repositioned in Morrison’s canon