Writer: Toni Morrison

I did not have an opportunity to read Toni Morrison until prison. I started with Beloved and then I read everything Morrison in the prison library. If my PO ever approves my use of the new laptop, you might get to read them.

Meanwhile consider Bernardine Evaristo on Lessons Learned From Toni Morrison from LitHub:

When I was younger, I didn’t fully appreciate the depth of the interior life of Morrison’s characters. My own experiences were still quite nascent and my world view of human behavior overwhelmingly simplistic, as my principles were founded on the polarities of good versus bad. Yet I believe that I still absorbed Morrison’s much more mature comprehension of people as multidimensional, even though I probably didn’t recognize it as such. Great stories have the potential to soak into our very being and subconsciously shape us through osmosis; a book such as this one has the potential to transform our perceptions about who we are in the world. Reading Beloved at an early stage in my adult life expanded my emotional knowledge beyond my own limitations and enabled me to engage with the extremes and profundity of human experience Morrison imaginatively recreates.

***

...She helps us see that, when people in power are desensitized to the humanity of their fellow human beings through a racist ideology that relegates them to a kind of semi-sentient sub-human, then they, the powerful overlords, are capable of perpetuating the worst atrocities, even as they self-justify their behavior as morally commendable.

***

One such example is that, while I could never write like Morrison, I did learn, or perhaps absorb, that she didn’t write perfect English in her novels. Not for her those perfectly modulated, grammatically correct sentences that are sometimes seen as the zenith of great writing, at least in the UK. Instead, she wrote what I call “interesting English,” employing a narrative style that subtly echoed the cadences, syntax and orality of her own culture, and slipping into the vernacular of her characters when appropriate. The lesson I learned from her as a young writer was that I did not have to adhere to any literary traditions that alienateWhen I was younger, I didn’t fully appreciate the depth of the interior life of Morrison’s characters. My own experiences were still quite nascent and my world view of human behavior overwhelmingly simplistic, as my principles were founded on the polarities of good versus bad. Yet I believe that I still absorbed Morrison’s much more mature comprehension of people as multidimensional, even though I probably didn’t recognize it as such. Great stories have the potential to soak into our very being and subconsciously shape us through osmosis; a book such as this one has the potential to transform our perceptions about who we are in the world. Reading Beloved at an early stage in my adult life expanded my emotional knowledge beyond my own limitations and enabled me to engage with the extremes and profundity of human experience Morrison imaginatively recreates.

***

...She helps us see that, when people in power are desensitized to the humanity of their fellow human beings through a racist ideology that relegates them to a kind of semi-sentient sub-human, then they, the powerful overlords, are capable of perpetuating the worst atrocities, even as they self-justify their behavior as morally commendable.

***

One such example is that, while I could never write like Morrison, I did learn, or perhaps absorb, that she didn’t write perfect English in her novels. Not for her those perfectly modulated, grammatically correct sentences that are sometimes seen as the zenith of great writing, at least in the UK. Instead, she wrote what I call “interesting English,” employing a narrative style that subtly echoed the cadences, syntax and orality of her own culture, and slipping into the vernacular of her characters when appropriate. The lesson I learned from her as a young writer was that I did not have to adhere to any literary traditions that alienated me, but could do my own thing.

Yep, Morrison is all of that. Go read her, not ban her.

sch

2/3/22