Toni Morrison's Oppression Is As American As Apple Pie

The theme of food and the different representations that they carry are imbued into Toni Morrison's work. In an interview Morrison explains the constructions of blackness and white, and states, "there is a lot of juice to be extracted from plumy reminiscences of 'individual' and 'freedom' if the tree upon which such fruit hangs is a black population forced to polar opposites"(Parker 622). Her use of imagery surrounding the issues of black oppression with the use of food speaks to the greater connotation that food represents to the African American community.
Audre Lorde remarks on the ubiquity of oppression when she stated that for African American women writers "oppression is as American as apple pie"(Parker). Toni Morrison's work explores
The abundance of love becomes overly sweet and artificial. Morrison describes it as, "A love that, like a pan of syrup kept too long on the stove, had cooked out, leaving only its odor and a hard, sweet sludge, impossible to scrape off (Morrison 165). Her children or devotion to work does not satisfy Nel's hunger. Sula is not satisfied with her sexual conquests, and so Parker assumes that their hunger is for one another, and their denial of their hunger leads to the demise of their friendship. Their hunger is mirrored by the general hunger that affects the town. The winter that Sula dies, the town suffers from famine (Parker 621). The infinite depths of Sula's hunger transcend her death and become a transferable hunger that is propelled onto the
In characters like Pecola, Mrs., Breedlove, Maureen Peal the representations of sugar and white milk illustrate the competitive-success that they perpetuate even through food. For Claudia, Frieda, Mrs. MacTeer and Connie the dislike for sugar, milk and variety of healthy foods equates to strong ideologies that are not wrapped up in struggle or confusion. The hunger that Joe, Dorcas, Violet, Alice, Sula and Nel feel is a sad hunger that has an emphasis on the other instead of the self. Through their appetite they are trying to reclaim an absence of love that food and drink never provides successfully. Whatever the impetus for their hunger or thirst, these characters hung or lack there of, is significant to them as people and metaphorically mirrors the appetite of the reader and the way in which we digest Toni Morrison's