Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison photographed in her office at Random House by Jill Krementz, 1974; all rights reserved (via The Wall Street Journal).
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
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As writers, as readers, we all have that piece of literature that got through to us and taught us that words can do more than just transport us to other worlds – they can drop us into the world we already inhabit and open our eyes and ears to its realities. Words can matter. Words can have power. Words can influence. Words can be beautiful. Words can be worlds in themselves.
The literature that got through to me on that level, time and time again, was Toni Morrison. Early on in high school, our English teacher gave us The Bluest Eye to read. Up until then, I’d seen literature as a pleasant escape. It was something I turned to constantly, but not something that could dismantle my understanding of the world. As I understood it, words were a vehicle for stories, and stories were a means for escape. Words were told in a certain order. They followed rules. They belonged to a grammatical language. And so, in my barely teenage mind, they themselves weren’t the art. (Of course I’d read poetry, but it didn’t have me convinced.) If writing was ever dry or boring, I zoned out, allowing my eyes to go over the text without actually processing the meaning of a single word of it. I still do this today. With Toni Morrison though, I understood that words themselves could blossom. As a writer, you could do what you wanted with them. And so, as I read The Bluest Eye for the first time, I saw convention thrown out the window and listened, completely enraptured by the way every single word on the page came alive, announcing itself unashamed and reverberating through my mind until I understood each and every one.
The Bluest Eye taught me that literature was a powerful medium, that art could bring about not only entertainment but empathy. The greater the art itself – the more masterful its production of language, its arrangement of words – the more it could help you feel. The more each word, each sentence, each lack of sentence could carry in itself. The more it could help you to extend your soul out into the world, helping not just to better understand yourself but to truly feel for others, to put yourself in places you have no way of traveling to yourself, to cry over events you haven’t experienced, to grow, to love. I grew reading about Pecola. I felt for her. I recognized the cruelty I saw out in the world. But I also marveled at the way it had been communicated – the artful use of seasons, the parallel development of earth, seeds, flowers. The marigolds that wouldn’t grow. I understood that literature was the world – it held beauty in it just as it broke your heart.
“She was a writer, a revolutionary, a gateway.”
That Toni Morrison has been called our greatest living writer is no coincidence. She won the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, along with so many other awards that can only begin to communicate just how monumental her contributions to literature have been. She challenged what was known as literature, throwing every convention beautifully out the window, and just as she created art, she challenged the structure of society – she dismissed everything that can be read as a default – sex, race, capitalism, the whole. “Why not?” Morrison asks in a 1989 interview in TIME Magazine when told that “you can’t just hand out money” to break the cycle of poverty. Asking Why not? allowed her to open so many doors, that she kept open for those who came after her. She was a writer, a revolutionary, a gateway.
Her loss is a great one, but we are all so lucky to have her language in the world.
& Because They Said It Better – Words to Read, Films to Watch
Beloved, Toni Morrison (novel, 1987)
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (documentary, 2019)
“No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear” by Toni Morrison (article, 2015)
Beyond the Books: all of the essays and reviews Toni Morrison wrote for the New York Times
“On Black Difficulty: Toni Morrison and the thrill of imperiousness.” by Namwali Serpell (article, 2019)
“Ghosts in the House” by Hilton Als (article, 2003)
A Collection of Toni Morrison quotes (twitter thread started by Lisa Lucas, 2019)
Toni Morrison’s New York Times obituary (article, 2019)
“Remembering Toni” by The Paris Review (article, 2019)
Olivia Gündüz-Willemin is Editor-in-Chief of The Attic on Eighth. She is dedicated to reading her way through the world and trying to stay as calm as possible.