24 pages • 48 minutes read
Toni MorrisonSweetness
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Toni Morrison
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses racism.
Toni Morrison is a highly celebrated African American writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She is known for her nuanced portrayals of Black life, especially the experiences of Black women. Her stories and novels, such as Beloved (1987) and The Bluest Eye (1970), often tackle themes of racial identity, community, and the trauma of the past, particularly as it relates to the legacy of slavery in the United States.
“Sweetness,” one of her short stories, exemplifies her depiction of such themes. In “Sweetness,” Morrison explores the issue of colorism in the Black community. The story revolves around a Black mother named Sweetness who, due to her own internalized colorism, struggles to accept her daughter Lula Ann’s dark skin. It is an excerpt from God Help the Child which, like The Bluest Eye, has a confessional tone, is written in the first person, and explores the internalization of white standards of beauty. God Help the Child goes on to focuses on the child, nicknamed Bride, as she grapples with her mother’s shame.
This theme of colorism is a common thread in Morrison’s works and reflects her experiences of growing up in a predominantly white community in Ohio. Morrison observed that seeing color “as the marker for race is really an error: It’s socially constructed, it’s culturally enforced and it has some advantages for certain people” (“I Regret Everything: Toni Morrison Looks Back on Her Personal Life.” Fresh Air, NPR, 2015). Morrison’s understanding of racism and colorism inform the themes and narrative style of the story and her broader body of work.
Literary Context: Black Women’s Literature
Toni Morrison’s “Sweetness” is an example of Black Women’s Literature, which represents the experiences, struggles, and aspirations of Black women in society and the way they navigate complex cultural, social, and political contexts. In “Sweetness,” Morrison explores colorism–“the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people” (“Toni Morrison Looks Back on Her Personal Life”)–within the context of Black women’s experiences. Sweetness is unable to accept her dark-skinned daughter, Lula Ann, due to her internalized self-hatred and societal pressure. Through Sweetness, Morrison portrays the way in which Black women are conditioned to value light skin as a sign of beauty, social status, and acceptance.
Morrison also explores the theme of Mother-Daughter Relationships within the context of Black women’s experiences. The strained relationship between Sweetness and Lula Ann as well as Sweetness’s mother and grandmother reflects the complex dynamics of Black mother-daughter relationships, shaped by intergenerational trauma, societal pressures, and cultural expectations. These ideas are also explored in novels from Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) to Brit Bennett’s The Mothers (2016). Through the relationship between Sweetness and Lula Ann, Morrison portrays the way in which Black women navigate their relationships with their mothers and the challenges that they face in developing their own identities.
“Sweetness” can be situated within the broader tradition of Black Women’s Literature, which has emerged from the voices of Black women writers such as Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neale Hurston. These writers explore the unique experiences of Black women and the intersections of race, gender, and class in their literary works.
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