Analyse af Toni Morrisons novelle 'Sweetness'

Racism and discrimination are traumatizing experiences, and unhealed traumas often have a huge impact on the next generation. The painful emotions and unhealed traumas sometimes get in between a parent and children’s relationship, which leaves the child in a though childhood, all alone. Parenting weighs heavily and the struggle and reflections on parenthood is exactly, what is being portrayed in Toni Morrison´s short story “Sweetness”. A 63-year-old African American mother, who though can pass for a white person, reflects her thoughts on her strict and repulsive upbringing of her daughter “Lula Ann”. Lula Ann was born with a very dark color, unlike her mother has ever seen before in a society, where colored people is looked upon as non-equally people compared to white people.

The short story is being told by a first-person narrator. The first-person narrator brings us into her confidence and thoughts and engages her point of view of her parenthood. Readers will witness the spoken reflections of Lula Ann's mother on her parenting, but it is fair to say that readers are observing her personal challenges at the same time. The narrator of the story tells her point of view in a vividly way. She is speaking directly to the reader and invites the reader to see their own point of view and draw their own conclusions through sentences like: "I wasn’t a bad mother, you have to know that” (Line, 99). At the end of the story, she speaks directly to her daughter: "Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes" (Line, 149). The narrator's use of metaphors makes the story more personal and the narrator more present and real.