Rating: 
Summary: My First
Review: This was the first book I read by Toni Morrison . I beleive I was 10 years old and it was exactly what I neede to hear. As a dark-skinned Black girl, I had images about me thrust upon me, but to read someone articulate all this subterfuge about me regarding color, colorism within the Black community was amazing. I no longer felt like I was the only one. that was along tme ago, but upon re-reading 'Tar Baby' last Summer, I wa still amazed how powerful this book is.
Rating: 
Summary: Oiy Vey!
Review: This was the first time Morrison tried to deal with contemporary life (the second time was Paradise) and she fails, miserably. Insted of offering an intelligent critique of consumer culture, Morrison contrasts consumer culture (here identified, in all forms, as "white" and Eurocentric) against a mythical blackness, represented by the character Son and his podunk hometown, Eloe. Son escapes some ship and hides in the house of a wealthy white couple, who just happen to have paid for a young black model to go to the Sorbonne. Morrison carefully sets her stage: on one side, Jade (the model) who is as white as snow because she rejects her black heritage and is grateful that the white couple paid for her schooling; and on the other side is Son and mystical ghosts who visit him, or some nonsuch. Naturally, this being a Morrison novel, neither side wins, but the white people get a good spanking when Morrison reveals that the wife used to abuse her son and the man is more interest in classical music than his family. This couple was written about more memorably, many times over, by Edward Albee in VIRGINIA WOOLF. Is this the best critique Morrison has to offer? Against consumer culture she posits, what, ghosts? Myth? Myth is the very tool of capitalism. Again, Morrison has failed to show how real black people actually live (watching television and reading the paper, not listening to ghosts; living in multi-racial communities, not conveniently isolated all-black ones)in order to make some sort of point about the importance of not forgetting your heritage. When given the choice between two polar opposites -- mythic blackness or false whiteness -- why should either Son or Jade choose. Both strategies are complicit with the capitalist culture Morrison tries to undermine.
Rating:
Summary: A little wacked, and writing was all over the place,
Review: Toni can write much better than this. It took me over a month to finish this book and I still had no idea what the heck was going on. It reminded me of the book Good Fences, a mixed-up mess. I was confused as heck. After reading her masterpeice "The Bluest Eye" this was a real disappointment. Toni's great but this book is by no means in the same league as "The Bluest Eye". Glad I didn't buy it with my money. I love you Toni but this was the pits!!!!
Rating:
Summary: post colonialist fantasy in the microcosm of one family
Review: Toni Morrison is undoubtedly a powerful writer and your earlier novels are imaginative and powerful. In Tar Baby, a postcolonialist fantasy is portrayed where black and white beautiful women, dutiful black servants, and a ghetto-like black man all progressively surround, relate how they are effected by this often obliging white man, and then effect a situation where his power is removed and he is then left at their mercy, where he will be treated by them as they have interpreted how he treated them. The whole situation parallels and may be a artistic recounting of a real life situation where large numbers of people in corporate America and Australia organize their lives around a designated person. This person is unknowingly "served" by the group in that his wishes and words are often carried out, however he is often "controlled" by coordinated psychological means by them as well. This experience is usually a disasterous one for the person involved in that he loses all that he has. For anyone who has seen any of these psychological gangrapes it is impossible not to suspect that Toni Morrison is documenting real life she has heard about or perhaps participated in. For this reason I do not recommend this book or that other books of Toni Morrison be read.
Rating: 
Summary: Of course, for HER, 3 stars is like 10 for somebody else....
Review: Yes, she's a great writer, but I did not enjoy this book as much as I adored Beloved and The Bluest Eye. Actually, this should be a play. Now, I love reading plays, but the bouncing back and forth between a theater-like dialogue and "scenes from a novel" bothered me. I couldn't get into it as I have her other superb novels. I'll keep trying, however. This is my second run at it and I held on a bit longer. Frankly, I found Jadine rather boring, too. The stereotyping of all the characters wasn't oppressive - it just seemed too burlesque...once again, theater. If I was a producer, I'd consider mounting "Tar Baby" on Broadway - and no, I am not talking musical comedy, though it has that quality, too.
Rating:
Summary: Black And White And A Whole Lot More
Review: _Tar Baby_ tells of the relationships of a wealthy white couple, Valerian and his wife, Margaret, and a black couple, Sydney and Onadine, who have been their servants for many years. The setting is a manor on an island in the Caribbean. One of the subplots concerns Margaret's tortured relationship with her estranged son, Michael. Onadine shares a terrible secret with Margaret concerning the son. Adding to the novel's complexity is the black couple's beautiful niece, Jadine, who lives with them and who has received an education at the Sorbonne, paid for in entirety by Valerian. Jadine finds herself torn between the black world and the white world, fitting into neither. To further complicate matters, Jadine later falls in love with a handsome black man who is called "Son," among other names, who has hidden himself in one of Margaret's closets after jumping ship. He is also on the lam due to his previous commission of a foolish crime of passion. Realizing her potential, Jadine is frightened of being trapped, like the limited, poorly educated, dirt poor women whom she meets while on an extended visit to Son's friends and family in Florida. Jadine is suffocating in this atmosphere, and is particularly haunted at night by obesssive thoughts of the women. To Jadine, Son will always remain their "son," an ignorant and irresponsible child, without any direction in life. This deliciously complex novel of race, family, and above all, human relations, could only have been done justice by writer of the caliber and sensitivity of a Toni Morrison. Ms. Morrison, an African-American and a woman, is able to find the nuances and subtleties inherent in the black experience that someone else would have difficulty understanding. _Tar Baby_ is a triumph in every way.
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