Toni Morrison Tar Baby

About Tar Baby

Toni Morrison's Tar Baby (1981) is her most satirical novel — organized around the folk-tale archetype of the tar baby, which traps what touches it. Set on a fictional Caribbean island, it follows the conflict between Jadine Childs, a Black model educated in Paris who has adopted European values, and Son, a man on the run for eight years. Morrison's meditation on assimilation and what Black culture can mean in a world structured by white capitalism.