Meridian is set in the American South during the 1960s and early '70s. The heroine, Meridian, is a black woman from a southern town. She marries, has a child, gets a divorce, sends her child away, and ends up working in a voters' registration campaign, encouraging African-Americans to register. Meridian is different from her co-workers in that she interacts with people as individuals, rather than by stereotyping them. For example, while others lecture black …showed first 75 words of 250 total…

…showed last 75 words of 250 total…herself and moves to the next small town. Commentary The novel takes a complicated look at black-white and black-black relations. It seems inadequate in this novel either to see people solely in terms of race or solely in terms of individual personalities. A large section of the novel deals with a marriage between a white woman and a black man. Walker seems to support an ethics based on personal interaction more than on universal rules.