Most literature written by American minority authors is pedagogical, not for the dominant culture, but for the minority cultures of which they are members. These authors realize that the dominant culture has misrepresented the history of minorities, and it is the job of minority writers to take on the challenge of setting the record straight to strengthen and heal their own cultures. Unfortunately, many minorities are ambivalent because they oscillate between assimilation (thus losing their cultural separateness and uniqueness) and segregation from the dominant culture. In deciding whether to assimilate, it is essential that minorities understand themselves as individuals and as a race. The mainstream history of the United States has been concerned with the past of the dominant culture while forgetting the equally important history of minorities. We cannot convey true American history without including and understanding minority cultures in the United States, but minority history must first be written. National amnesia of minority history cannot be tolerated. Toni Morrison is a minority writer who took on the challenge of preventing national amnesia by educating African Americans by remembering their past and rewriting their history. In her trilogy, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, and her other works, Morrison has succeeded in creating a literature for African Americans that allows them to remember their history from slavery to the present day. Toni Morrison has been called America's national author and is often compared to the great authors of mainstream culture such as William Faulkner. Morrison's fiction is appreciated not only for its entertainment, but through his works he has introduced African Americans to a literature in which their heritage and history are... at the center of paper......, Inc., 1992 .Morrison, Toni. Paradise. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc. 1997. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the dark: Whiteness and the literary imagination. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1992. Morrison, Toni, Song of Songs. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1977. Reyes, Angelita. Memory, narrative, and identity: New essays in American ethnic literatures. Carnival as an archaeological site of memory. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994, 179-197. Singh, Amritjit, Joseph T. Skerretk Jr. and Robert e. Hogan. Memory, narrative, and identity: New essays in American ethnic literatures. Introduction. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994. Tally, Justine. Paradise has reconsidered the (hello) stories and truths of Toni Morrison. Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1999.