Reading Order
Tar Baby Reading Order
Tar Baby (1981) by Toni Morrison is her fourth novel — set largely on a fictional Caribbean island, Isle des Chevaliers, and in New York City, and following Jadine Childs, a beautiful Black woman raised in Paris and educated at the Sorbonne on the money of a wealthy white chocolate manufacturer, and Son, a man on the run who appears on the island having hidden on the manufacturer's yacht. Jadine and Son's love affair is the novel's center, but it is the occasion for Morrison's extended meditation on the tensions between African American identity and assimilation into white culture, between the ancestral past and the cosmopolitan present, between what Jadine is and what Son represents to her. Tar Baby is Morrison's most overtly political novel and also her most overtly sensuous — the Caribbean setting is rendered with extraordinary vividness, and the love affair between Jadine and Son has a heat that Morrison's fiction rarely offers so directly. The novel is also her most explicit engagement with the tar baby story from African American folklore — the idea of being stuck, of the thing that holds you the more you struggle against it — and both Jadine and Son are tar babies to each other in different ways. Published after Song of Solomon (1977) brought Morrison national recognition, Tar Baby was her fourth novel and confirmed her as one of the major American writers of her generation.
Where to start
Tar Baby — any Knopf or Vintage paperback. Stands completely alone and can be read as Morrison's first novel; no prior Morrison knowledge required. Most accessible as an entry point for readers who want to understand Morrison's range.
Complete Tar Baby Book List
- 1Buy
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison·1981·The novel — Jadine and Son's love affair on Isle des Chevaliers; the tension between African American identity and assimilation into white culture; Morrison's most overtly political and most sensuously written novel; the Caribbean setting is one of the great literary places in her fiction. - 2Buy
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison·1977·Morrison's breakthrough novel — Milkman Dead's search for his family's history; the essential companion and the predecessor that established her national reputation before Tar Baby; the National Book Critics Circle Award winner. - 3Buy
Beloved
Toni Morrison·1987·Morrison's Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the essential companion and her defining work; if Tar Baby is about the tension between African American identity and assimilation, Beloved is about the roots of that identity in the traumatic history of slavery. - 4Buy
Sula
Toni Morrison·1973·Morrison's second novel — the companion in her fiction about African American women's friendship and the way women are defined and constrained by their communities; the Bottom, Ohio is the companion community to Isle des Chevaliers and Eloe, Florida in Tar Baby. - 5Buy
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston·1937·Hurston's Harlem Renaissance masterpiece — the companion in African American literary fiction about a Black woman's quest for identity and love against the expectations of her community; Janie Crawford and Jadine Childs are companion figures across decades of African American women's fiction. - 6Buy
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin·1956·Baldwin's novel about an American man in Paris and his identity crisis — the companion in American fiction about identity, European cosmopolitanism, and what it means to be formed by one culture and forced to reckon with another; the Paris context of Jadine's formation has its companion in Baldwin's Paris. - 7Buy
Passing
Nella Larsen·1929·Larsen's Harlem Renaissance novel — the companion in African American literary fiction about the tensions between racial identity and assimilation into white society; Irene and Clare's dynamic is an earlier version of the tension between Jadine and Son's versions of African American identity. - 8Buy
Middle Passage
Charles Johnson·1990·Johnson's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in African American literary fiction about history, identity, and the sea; where Tar Baby uses the Caribbean as a site for meditation on African American identity, Middle Passage uses the Atlantic itself.
Tar Baby — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tar Baby about?
Tar Baby is set primarily on Isle des Chevaliers, a fictional Caribbean island, and in New York City. Valerian Street, a wealthy retired white candy manufacturer, and his wife Margaret live on the island with their Black servants Ondine and Sydney Childs. Jadine, the Childs' niece, has been educated in Paris on Valerian's money and is visiting the island when Son, a Black American man on the run, is discovered hiding on Valerian's yacht. Son and Jadine begin a love affair — intense, volatile, and ideologically fraught — and the novel follows their affair across the island and New York and the Florida town where Son grew up. Their relationship is also a debate about African American identity: Jadine represents assimilation into white culture and cosmopolitan success; Son represents the ancestral past and the community Jadine has left behind.
What is the tar baby metaphor in the novel?
The tar baby — from African American folklore, about a figure made of tar and turpentine that catches Br'er Rabbit because he keeps struggling against it — is the novel's central metaphor, and it works in multiple directions. Son is a tar baby to Jadine: he sticks to her, holds her, traps her in something she cannot escape even though she struggles. Jadine is also a tar baby to Son: she draws him out of Eloe and his community and traps him in a world that is not his. And the novel suggests that African American identity itself is a kind of tar baby — the history and community that can trap you or anchor you depending on how you understand your relationship to it.
Who are the main characters?
Jadine Childs is the central character — a beautiful, cosmopolitan Black woman raised and educated in Paris on Valerian Street's money, a model who is trying to build a life that transcends her origins. Son (William Green) is a Black American man who has been on the run from the law for eight years, moving from ship to ship, who appears on Isle des Chevaliers without invitation. Valerian Street is the retired white candy manufacturer who owns the island and whose patronage has shaped Jadine's life. Ondine and Sydney Childs are Jadine's aunt and uncle, the servants who have worked for Valerian for decades. The novel's perspective moves among all of them, and the Caribbean island itself is almost a character.
How does Tar Baby compare to Morrison's other novels?
Tar Baby is Morrison's most overtly political novel in its direct engagement with the tensions between African American assimilation and Black identity, and her most sensuously written in its rendering of the Caribbean setting and the love affair between Jadine and Son. It is less formally experimental than Jazz or Beloved, closer to a conventional novel structure. It is also the most explicitly about a Black woman's relationship with white money and white institutions — the question of what Jadine owes Valerian Street, and what she owes her own community, runs through the novel. For readers who want to understand Morrison's full range, Tar Baby shows a different side from the mythic and historical registers of Beloved and Song of Solomon.
What should I read after Tar Baby?
After Tar Baby, Beloved (1987) is Morrison's Nobel and Pulitzer-winning masterpiece. Song of Solomon (1977) is the companion in her fiction about African American identity and ancestry. For African American literary fiction about the tension between assimilation and community, Nella Larsen's Passing and James Baldwin's Another Country are important companions. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is the most important predecessor in African American women's fiction.
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