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Paradise (Morrison novel)Paradise is a 1997 novel by Toni Morrison, and her first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. According to the author, Paradise completes a "trilogy" that begins with Beloved (1987) and includes Jazz (1992).

Paradise was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection for January 1998 and ranked in the BlackBoard Bestsellers List the following August. Morrison wanted to call the novel War but was overridden by her editor.

Plot
The novel is structured into nine sections. The first is named "Ruby" after the town on which the book centers. The rest are named for women implicated variously in the life of the town and the Convent. The Convent women are Mavis, Grace (known as "Gigi"), Seneca, Divine (whose name is actually "Pallas"), and Consolata (also known as "Connie"). The Ruby women – or children, in the case of Save-Marie – are Patricia and Lone. Though the chapters are named for specific characters, in telling their stories, Morrison tells the parallel histories of the town of Ruby and the Convent 17 miles south of it, and how the men of Ruby become intent on destroying the Convent women.

Ruby

Paradise opens in 1976 with nine men going in for the kill. They are the prominent men of Ruby, a purposefully isolated, peaceful all-black town in Oklahoma with a population of 360. In this group are the twins Steward and Deacon "Deek" Morgan, the de facto leaders of the town. Throughout the book we gradually learn why Ruby was founded, the history of the failed town of Haven that preceded it, and the reasons for Ruby's rigid hierarchies and stringent exclusion of outsiders, to the point where the town's leaders decide they must eliminate the nearby Convent which in fact is not a convent but rather a former embezzler's mansion now inhabited by a group of women with troubled pasts.

Before Ruby, there was Haven. Founded in Oklahoma in 1890, Haven was founded by a group containing nine complete families (the Blackhorses, Beauchamps, Catos, two DuPres families, Fleetwoods, Floods, Morgans, and Pooles) and fragments of others. The founding fathers, led by Zechariah Morgan, are motivated to found a new community by the exclusion they face from public life and job opportunities, both as black men and particularly as dark-skinned black men. When they arrive in the place where they decide to situate their new town, they first built a large and sturdy Oven of brick and iron, even though they are living in wagons and sod shelters. The Oven both nourishes them and serves as a symbol of everything they have achieved.

Haven flourishes for several decades but falters in the post World War II period. Returning from service, the twins Deacon and Steward Morgan perceive that not much has changed in the outside world since Haven was founded: there is still rampant colorism and anti-black discrimination. Preferring to renew the mission begun by their forefathers of self-sufficient isolation from the outside world, in 1949 they lead a group of 15 families out of Haven to establish a new all-black town. The men take the Oven with them when they leave Haven at the expense of other supplies, and painstakingly rebuild it when they arrive, although in the new town it serves principally a symbolic rather than practical purpose. Though called "New Haven" in the interim, it is eventually named "Ruby", after the younger sister of the Morgan twins who dies when she is repeatedly refused medical attention because of her race. The name of the town, therefore, belies the way in which it is founded out of the indignation of exclusion, and the inability of black men to “protect


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