Tar Baby by Toni Morrison (1981)

A mysterious stranger upends a family.

Book Review: Tar Baby is the archetypal story of the stranger, the outsider, the Other, who enters, exposes, and disrupts the settled but hidden dysfunctional workings of a family. In doing so he exposes the mixed attitudes that blacks and whites have about whites and blacks. At the same time, while not a "beach read," it is the most accessible, easiest, and closest to fun of any of my Toni Morrison reads. As much as I recognize her immense talent (hey, she won the Nobel), I know her books aren't always fun to read. Isn't that one definition of a Classic: a book you know is good but avoid reading? Tar Baby begins in the Caribbean where a wealthy white man and his much younger, mentally ill white wife have settled with their black servants, another married couple, and their light-skinned niece. There's little subtlety in Morrison's images -- I should mention there's a black baby-sealskin coat. Ouch! Speaking of beach reads, here a quick makeover transforms the ugliest kid in school into the prettiest and the two characters who detest each other are destined to fall in love. The story reminds of Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) (a remake of Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)). But Morrison takes the story several quantum leaps beyond the simple and expected. Easy read -- difficult issues. She examines white attitudes toward blacks, black attitudes toward blacks, black attitudes toward whites. She mixes in class as well as race: economic factors, employment, working for a living, that complicate the racial picture. Indoor workers versus outdoor workers; native culture versus foreign culture. In Tar Baby the familial and racial patterns, rituals, and expectations have been upended, but few of the characters truly reassess their thinking. After all, it's a version of a love story -- and what does love mean? Where is the tar baby? One might think Son would be attracted to a proud black woman, but instead he finds the "yalla" Jadine irresistible. Son's a chauvinist at heart and engages in stalking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and worse, but is still endlessly attractive to Jadine. Overlaying the plot is Morrison's symbolic conflict between nature, the black world, confronting the white world's crumbling civilization. The colonial occupation destroyed nature and native culture on the island, and the survivors are still trying to pick up the pieces. Morrison asks difficult questions about finding a place along a racial spectrum, a human spectrum, and provides no easy answers.  [4½★]