Paradise

“They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.”

As she states in the Foreword to the Vintage International edition of Paradise, Morrison wanted the novel to “disrupt the assumptions of racial discourse” (xv). Whenever the text refers to the “white girl,” it does not clarify which of the five Convent women she is. By not disclosing the identity of the white girl, Morrison asks the reader to question what stereotypes they might be leaning on to guess who she could be.

“The embezzler’s joy that could be demolished was, particularly in the dining room, which the nuns converted to a schoolroom, where stilled Arapaho girls once sat and learned to forget.”

Morrison is careful not to erase the presence of Indigenous people or the continued epistemological violence and dispossession of land they experienced as other people continued settling the West. Historically, Catholic schools played a significant role in erasing Indigenous cultures. The Arapaho girls “learned to forget” their religious practices, languages, traditional clothing, and many more elements of their culture.

“The women had no firm opinion until the nephew’s mother died. Her funeral—the town’s first—stopped the schedule of discussion and its necessity. They named the town after one of their own and the men did not gainsay them. All right. Well. Ruby. Young Ruby.”

When Ruby Morgan dies, the newly founded town is named after her. For the town, Ruby embodies the importance of rejecting outsiders, as her death results from the rejection that the townspeople faced. Also, in a town where the men hold all the authority, it is meaningful that the women have the final say in naming the town.