sunday salons

Jazz by Toni Morrison

January 8, 2006

Toni Morrison's luscious, moving, semi-tragic, revealing novel, Jazz, is not about New Orleans particularly; but it summons up some of the confusion and heartbreak associated with the flood. It also recalls the migrations from the South, the echoes of that south in Harlem and New York not so many years ago. And it makes sharply present a context that includes lynching, discrimination, and the vibrancy of a culture always in renewal. Some have pointed to the "funkiness" in sections of it, to what it means to have 'cracks' in consciousness, to be in search and to be lost. And it all seems to occur along with the golden sounds of a hidden saxophone.

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."
–Toni Morrison
Greenfield-Sanders, courtesy of photographer.

Satellite Salon

Arlington, Virginia Mary Bullock, Host January 29, 2006

As I write this announcement on New Years Day, which happens to be E.M. Forster's birth date, I'm thinking of his words in Howard's End: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, And human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect..."

I hope we will find our own connections, even in the midst of perplexing and frustrating problems in our own society and in the world, as we focus on Toni Morrison's story of migration and struggle to find one's place in the world.

Mary Bullock: marybullock@maxinegreene.org

Satellite Salon

Columbia, South Carolina Craig Kridel, Host January 22, 2006

In conjunction with the New York City-based Maxine Greene Foundation, the Museum of Education will stage our second (and final) salon-informal discussion for the academic year. We will read Toni Morrison’s novel, Jazz.  I am so pleased to report that, once again, Lee Bauknight, faculty in the Department of English and former Associate Curator of the Museum of Education, will lead our discussion.

Please know that you and any of your friends, students, and colleagues are invited to attend. The "Greene Salon" is free and open to anyone who has read the novel. In accordance with Maxine’s life long efforts to build communities and public spaces, we recognized that an ongoing salon program would be most enjoyable and would come to represent the basic beliefs and intentions of the Museum of Education.

Craig Kridel: craigkridel@maxinegreene.org