摘要：As some critics have pointed out, storytelling is one of Toni Morrison's approaches to literature, playing an essential role in her novels. African-American folklore, rituals and myths were very important in her childhood, as they were an intrinsic part of the Wofford family life. Thus, the oral quality of Morrison's narrative has its roots in her embracement of the African-American tradition of storytelling, which served an important function in maintaining Black history, 2 becoming "a means of re-membering a dis-membered past, dis-membered family, and community." 3 Morrison wants that African-American history can survive, since the official culture has ignored it. Black women writers "recollect stories that were never written but were passed down orally from generation to generation, as well as [. . .] imagine stories that were too painful ever to be told." 4 In her work of fiction, Morrison constructs a counternarrative, which rejects dominant definitions of black individuals. She "abandons the master's way of writing history in favor of the African style of storytelling called griot, which moves in a non-linear motion through the story."
