Guest Editors’ Introduction—Visionary Praxis: Paule Marshall’s, Ntozake Shange’s, and Toni Morrison’s Foresight concerning Sick Violence and Violent Sickness

Abstract

This introduction provides an overview of the special issue that focuses on the interconnections of Black women’s literary studies with the crises of COVID-19 and ongoing anti-Black violence. More specifically, it considers how the work of three renowned writers, Paule Marshall, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison—which collectively spans over fifty years—offers models for how to reimagine our current circumstances and create more just futures in our national and global communities. The essay identifies and expounds on the overarching question of the special issue: how does the work of Marshall, Shange, and Morrison speak to contemporary affairs and concerns? By engaging this question, this collection of essays offers new insights about these women’s writing in particular and expands the corpus of scholarship on Black women’s writing in general. In the aftermath of the passing of these writers, a collective reappraisal of their oeuvres is a timely and fitting tribute, as each of their bodies of work reveals that they long have engaged concerns about Black people’s encounters with systemic barriers that have laid the foundation for the current twinned crises of anti-Black violence and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19.