Shuffling Toward Cincinnati

In 1949 Toni Morrison left Ohio. Aside from a brief stint in the ‘60s, she never lived there again. Yet Morrison remained invested in Ohio as the imaginative origin of her fiction. First there was The Bluest Eye (1970), set in her hometown of Lorain; then Sula (1973) set in the fictional Medallion, Ohio. Song of Solomon (1977) departs from Morrison’s home state but remains within the Great Lakes, this time set in an unnamed town in a similarly industrial state, Michigan. And Tar Baby (1981) is the exception that proves the rule: after crafting a polyvocal narrative voice that she gave over to the setting itself, a Caribbean island, Morrison went on to pen her magnum opus, Beloved (1987), set in Cincinnati. It’s as if her novels moved Southward, only to return home again.