Annotation
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Author Notes
Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
Characters
| Name | Dead, Macon III, aka "Milkman" |
| Gender | Male |
| Trait | African American |
| Name | Dead, Macon II |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Traits | Married |
| Father | |
| African American | |
| Genre | Literary Domestic --Generational Sociological Fiction |
| Topics | African Americans Fathers and sons Family relationships Family histories Heritage Racial identity Self-discovery Social classes |
| Setting | Michigan |