discussion groups: Toni Morrison's book A Mercy

In anticipation of Toni Morrison's visit to Oberlin, several one-time book discussions of her new book A Mercy will be held on campus.

when and where

Please RSVP online for one of the following groups:

    Wed, April 15 7:00p-8:00p
         Afrikan Heritage House, Lord Lounge
         Facilitators: Melissa Elie, Mellon Library Intern
                           Gillian Johns, Professor of English

    Tues, April 21 noon-1:00p
          Wilder 211
          Faciltators: Alison Ricker, Science Librarian
                            Shana Osho, Oberlin Student

    Tues, April 21 8:30p-9:30p
         Wilder 112

         Facilitators: Sarah Schaffer, Mellon Library Intern

                            Carol Lasser, Professor of History

    Wed, April 22 4:30p-5:30p
         Wilder 115
         Facilitators: Jennifer Stakey, Reference Librarian

                           Tabia Gaston, Library Mellon Fellow

Light refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP so we know how much food to purchase.

events are co-sponsored by:

Oberlin College Library, Student Friends of the Library, Community and Government Relations Office and The Office of the President.

how to get the book

• Check OBIS for copies at Oberlin College Library
• Check OPL catalog (Oberlin Public Library)
• Check OhioLINK to borrow a copy from another library
• Copies are available for purchase at the Campus Bookstore and Mindfair downtown
  
  

about the book

In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.

Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady.” Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master’s house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.

There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who’s spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens’ mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.

A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.  (from book jacket)

Link to New York Times book review