‘You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.’ Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

The essay discusses the relation between African Americans and the wilderness while focusing on Toni Morrison’s ninth novel A Mercy (2008). Adopting the recent approach of some African American eco-critics I argue that by juxtaposing the characters’ different experiences of nature Morrison’s novel shows how the African American experience of the wilderness cannot be interpreted according to its canonical representations due to some specific historical circumstances like bondage and discrimination that have deeply contributed to the definition of the African American identity.