Reading Order
Tar BabyToni Morrison Tar Baby Reading Order
Toni Morrison's Tar Baby (1981) is her most satirical and most self-consciously mythological novel — organized around the folk-tale archetype of the tar baby, which traps what touches it. Set on a fictional Caribbean island, Tar Baby follows the conflict between Jadine Childs, a Black model educated in Paris who has adopted European values, and Son, a man who has been living on the run for eight years after killing his wife. The novel is Morrison's meditation on the costs of assimilation and the question of what Black culture can mean in a world structured by white capitalism.
Where to start
Song of Solomon
Complete Tar Baby Book List
- 1Buy
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison·1977·The essential companion — Morrison's National Book Award-winning novel; the most narratively accessible of her major works and the best introduction to the cultural concerns Tar Baby develops. - 2Buy
Tar Baby
Toni Morrison·1981·The novel itself — Jadine and Son on the Isle des Chevaliers; the tar-baby myth; the conflict between European assimilation and Black cultural roots. - 3Buy
Sula
Toni Morrison·1973·The essential early companion — Morrison's study of female friendship and community in the Bottom, Ohio; the novel that most directly anticipates Tar Baby's interest in what it costs a Black woman to define herself against her community's expectations. - 4Buy
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston·1937·Hurston's novel about Janie Crawford's search for self-expression and love — the most important predecessor to Morrison's interest in Black women's self-determination and the folk culture that Morrison draws on for the tar-baby archetype. - 5Buy
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin·1956·Baldwin's novel about an American man in Paris who must choose between his lover Giovanni and a conventional life — the most direct companion to Tar Baby's portrait of a Black American who has made herself at home in Europe and the conflict that erupts when that choice is challenged. - 6Buy
Beloved
Toni Morrison·1987·The essential Morrison — the Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece; read this after Tar Baby to see Morrison move from satire and myth to her most concentrated historical and moral vision. - 7Buy
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison·1952·Ellison's novel shares Tar Baby's interest in the Black intellectual who has been educated into white culture and the painful question of what that education has cost; the essential companion in the Black American novel tradition on the question of assimilation.
Tar Baby — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Toni Morrison's Tar Baby about?
Tar Baby is set on a fictional Caribbean island and follows Jadine Childs, a Black model educated in Paris and employed by a wealthy white couple, and Son, a Black man who has been hiding on their estate. Their relationship — which collapses under the weight of their different relationships to Black culture and white assimilation — is organized around the folk-tale archetype of the tar baby.
Is Tar Baby a good first Toni Morrison novel?
Song of Solomon or Beloved are better first Morrisons. Tar Baby is Morrison at her most satirical and most explicitly political, which works best when you have a sense of her range from the other novels. Its Caribbean setting is also unique in her work and can feel disorienting without prior context.
What is the significance of the tar baby in Morrison's novel?
Morrison draws on the African-American folk tale in which a figure made of tar traps whatever touches it — in her novel, the systems of white wealth and European culture function as the tar baby, trapping Black people who try to engage with them while also trapping those who flee.
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