Analyse af Toni Morrisons novelle 'Sweetness'

Society’s pressure has always been harder on minorities. We know it, and the minorities know it. “Sweetness” by the African American author Toni Morrison from 2015, tells about society’s pressure from the perspective of a dysfunctional mother-and-daughter relationship. “Sweetness” is a heartrending short story that takes place in the United States and is about racial discrimination among many topics.

The story starts with the mom giving birth to a black child that she disgusts and denies. She comes from a black family, but she is not totally black, so that she can go for a place between black and white, she calls herself high-yellow. The child is nothing like either her mother or father, so the mother panics and tries to analyze what her daughter looks likes and takes a somewhat distance from her “She was so black she scared me. Midnight black, Sudanese black… Ain’t nobody in my family anywhere near that color. Tar is the closest I can think of, yet her hair don’t go with the skin. It’s different – straight but curly, like the hair on those naked tribes in Australia. You might think she’s a throwback, but a throwback to what? You should’ve seen my grandmother; she passed for white, married a white man, and never said another word to any one of her children.” Not only that, the father, who is neither black, leaves her alone with the child because he is sure the narrator/mother has been cheating on her.