emmasnoveldevice

Remembering Toni Morrison: a few thoughts and memories

 She was born  Chloe Anthony Wofford . To imagine her with that name makes me think of a dreamy serious girl growing up in  Ohio. 

She was never an easy  read, not of syntax or of concept.  But she wasn’t pompous or  humourless. When I  saw her in conversation at the South Bank, in 2011, I think, I wondered at how girlish she seemed and how she liked to laugh.                         

She wrote honestly and It was clear to me that  she loved Black people. She wrote about us in a way that was honest, loving, and unsentimental, but  which never felt  she was playing to an white audience/white gaze. She wrote about the complexities and the joys of being Black, and she defined herself as a Black writer , and as  not a writer who happened to be Black.

She was good friends with James  Baldwin.

She spoke about how being  a writer was not an impossible thing to become  but  one that it would take sacrifices. But not the sacrifices commonly thought of:  for example, of forsaking children to have a career ( whether  a writing careers or a lawyer, say). She wrote that African-American women have a history of being ‘harbour and ship, of inn and trail,’ and that ‘if we can’t do it, then it can’t be done!’

She spoke about the practicalities  of being a writer: finding  the time of day when you write best; the hard work of writing and rewriting and editing;

She also said  ‘ Time has never really been a problem for me.  I don’t do much. I don’t go out. I don’t entertain. And I get off the telephone. Those activities demand an enormous part of what people call time.’ ( Claudia Tate, Black women writers at work, 1983)

She spoke about the language she used and described it as quiet, to engage the reader’s participation.

Her voice was utterly unique. It is a honour and privilege to read her.