Jazz Summary
Toni Morrison

Everything you need to understand or teach Jazz by Toni Morrison.

Jazz Summary & Study Guide

30 Jazz Lessons
20 Activities
180 Multiple Choice Questions
60 Short Essay Questions
20 Essay Questions
Pre-Made Tests and Quizzes
...and more

Jazz Summary

Jazz is the story of a love affair between Joe Trace, a fifty-year-old married waiter and part-time cosmetics salesman, and Dorcas, a seventeen-year-old girl. When Dorcas leaves Joe for a younger man, he tracks her down at a party and shoots her. Dorcas refuses to implicate Joe, declining medical assistance and telling everyone who asks about the shooter, "I'll tell you tomorrow."

Tomorrow, of course, she is dead. Joe's wife Violet...

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Toni Morrison Biographies (7)

Toni Morrison

2,040 words, approx. 7 pages

Toni Morrison (born 1931) was best known for her intricately woven novels, which focused on intimate relationships, especially between men and women, set against the backdrop of African American cultu... Read more

Toni Morrison

4,312 words, approx. 15 pages

"When they say I'm a great American novelist," Toni Morrison commented to Gail Caldwell in an interview published in Conversations with Toni Morrison, "I say, 'Ha! They're trying to say I'm not black.... Read more

Toni Morrison

2,833 words, approx. 10 pages

One of the most prominent contemporary analysts of the black experience, Toni Morrison has, within a decade, established herself as a significant American novelist. As a senior editor at Random Hous... Read more

Toni Morrison

8,430 words, approx. 29 pages

When her picture appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 1981 and her fourth novel, Tar Baby, was on the year's best-seller list, Toni Morrison was an anomaly in two respects: she is a black writer who... Read more

Toni Morrison

12,322 words, approx. 42 pages

[This entry was updated by Catherine E. Lewis (University of South Carolina) from the entry by Denise Heinze (Western Carolina University) in DLB 143: American Novelists Since World War II, Third Seri... Read more

Toni Morrison

9,565 words, approx. 32 pages

Biography EssayToni Morrison is one of America's most important writers of fiction. She has received critical acclaim, most notably the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987), the 1978 National Book C... Read more

Toni Morrison

6,928 words, approx. 24 pages

Toni Morrison was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio. "Only The Bluest Eye, my first book, is set in Lorain. In the others I was more interested in mood than in geography.... [However], no matter what I ... Read more

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