whilereadingandwalking:Toni Morrison on her Books“One day I realized that not everything that needed

whilereadingandwalking:Toni Morrison on her Books“One day I realized that not everything that needed to be written was written.” On November 9 in Buffalo, Toni Morrison told a sold-out crowd of 2,300 people about her books. It was such a fascinating talk that I’m going to have to split my recap into two parts: her discussion of her fiction, and the Q&A that followed. A fan of Toni Morrison, I sat through her talk laughing into my notebook as I furiously scribbled down notes. An icon was speaking. Morrison wrote her first novel at the age of 37 when she realized that she had read novels by black people, and about black people, but never for black readers. “I wanted to say that racism really hurts. It hurts you, and if you are a child, it can destroy you.” At 10 years old, Morrison was walking with her friend Eunice debating whether God existed. Eunice insisted he didn’t, because “I have been praying for blue eyes for years. And I don’t have them yet.” Morrison looked at her friend with jet black skin and high cheekbones and contemplated beauty for the first time, and that became the inspiration for The Bluest Eye. “Everybody seemed to hate that book,” said Morrison.She wrote Sula as an exposition and interrogation of a female friendship that isn’t male-oriented—where the main center of the women’s lives is not a man. Then her father died. She didn’t go to her hometown for three years because she thought it had no business being there without her father, but then she began to think about male relationships, and out of that, Song of Solomon was born. “I think that book got more attention. Maybe because it was about men… but whatever,” Morrison shrugged.She created The Black Book specifically to sell to black readers, and as she wrote it, she came across the story of a black slave woman who had killed her child. In the newspaper articles, there was a fierce debate about what her punishment should be. The abolitionists thought she should be hanged, because it implied that she was her own person, a mother, with the responsibility to make decisions. The slave owner community believed she should be returned to her owner, which implied she was nothing but an animal. Ultimately, she was returned to her owner. Morrison thought a lot about that story, and about that debate, and finally it occurred to her that “the only one who has any real judgment about this is the dead girl.” Beloved was born.Jazz was a novel about the period of jazz—without ever mentioning the actual word “jazz.” Paradise was entirely different. When she was three, and her sister was four, they were playing on the floor, and their great, great, grandmother came to visit. She seemed about 8 feet tall, and had a cane that she did not need, and she came into the room, looked at them, and said, “These children have been tampered with.” At the time, Morrison thought it a compliment. But it caused a fight, and later, she realized that her grandmother, who was “black as tar,” was saying that their skin color wasn’t pure. Morrison “grew up knowing black was pure,” and thinking about that led to Paradise, this novel about a town that focuses on black racial purity, but has a community of contemporary young women living just outside its borders. “I thought it was a success, and,” Morrison added, “I got back at my great grandmother.”Love was about how the only people who can love flawlessly are children. A Mercy emerged from an attempt to focus on the time when religion was the biggest strife in America, early on, and she worked with the book designer on that book to produce a map that had only Native American names for all of New England on the endpapers. “I’m very bad with titles,” Morrison admitted, and she hated the title of God Help the Child, but could think of nothing better. It’s a novel about two people who can think only of themselves, but they are put in a position where they had to think about someone else, and only then can they have a true relationship. And in Home, she tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who cannot see color—until he gets home. Photo by Bruce Jackson. -- source link

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