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The Stop
Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford,1 Toni Morrison (18 February 1931 - 5 August 2019) is so far the only African American writer - and one of few women - to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Accepting the award in 1993, she responded to the Swedish Academy’s citation of her work’s ‘visionary force and poetic import’ by referencing the importance of language itself, noting she understood it ‘partly as a system, partly as a living thing over which one has control, but mostly as an agency - as an act with consequences.’ Throughout a career spanning 11 novels, numerous children’s books, poetry, short fiction, plays, articles, non-fiction and even a libretto, Morrison used her ‘sinuous poetic style’ to bring to life an ‘essential aspect of American reality’ by investigating the traumatic impact of slavery and its consequences on the ‘psychic and social lives’ of African American women and men.2
Growing up in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison’s family ‘possessed an intense love of and appreciation for’ African American culture, and her childhood was deeply informed by storytelling, folktales and songs.3 Following high school, Morrison attended Howard University from 1949 - 1953 and earned a Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955 on the strength of a thesis titled ‘Virginia Woolf’s and William Faulkner’s Treatment of the Alienated.’ Two years spent teaching English at Texas Southern University were followed by seven years of teaching back at Howard,4 but her writing career only began when she joined Random House in 1965 as the first African American woman senior editor in the company’s fiction department. Though her position meant she was able to bring a good deal of African American literature to the mainstream, she was acutely aware of the ‘lack of novels which spoke to readers such as herself’ and decided to address this issue.
In 1970, Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye - a ‘novel of initiation concerning a victimised adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes.’ The novel was both a critical and commercial success and was followed in 1973 by her second novel, Sula. Examining the dynamics of friendship and the ‘expectations for conformity’ within the African American community, the novel’s theme established the ‘pattern for some of her later fiction.’ Her third novel, Song of Solomon (1977) is broad-ranging both historically and geographically and - unusually for Morrison - has a black male character as its protagonist.5 In this novel, which won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, she developed her unique style of magic realism as a way of addressing aspects of African American slavery.
Tar Baby (1981) was followed in 1987 by Beloved6 the first novel in a trilogy concerned with African American ‘small town and urban communities over the past 150 years.’ Jazz - set in Harlem in the 1920s - was published in 1992 and Paradise (1998) saw a return to the small-town setting in rural Ohio first seen in Beloved. In 2003 she published Love, a novel that examined the ‘historical and cultural changes affecting African Americans from the 1930s till the 80s, before, during and after the civil rights movement’ through a central character who’s fortune is built on the ‘need for a holiday resort for black people in segregated America.’ Her ninth novel, A Mercy (2008), is set in 1682 during the early years of colonial Virginia, and Home (2012) examines the 20th century through the eyes of a Korean war veteran in segregated 1950s America who tries to save his sister from a white doctor’s medical experiments.7 Her final novel, God Help the Child (2015), saw a return to her first novel’s themes by tracing the life of a young woman in the fashion industry who is ‘tormented by memories of her [light-skinned] mother’s dislike of her dark skin.’
In 1984 Morrison began teaching writing at the State University of New York at Albany, and in 1989 she joined the faculty of Princeton University where she remained until her retirement in 2006. In addition to the Nobel Prize, throughout her career Morrison won numerous awards and honorary degrees including being made an officer of the French Legion of Honour in 2010 and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012. In August 2019, she died at the age of 88 due to complications from pneumonia.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to an episode (15:05) of NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series showcasing an ensemble of current and former jazz pupils at New York’s The Julliard School. It’s an outstanding performance - rightly commended as much for its incredible audio quality as it is for the music itself. A great way to spend fifteen minutes.
Tiny Desk Concert: Julliard Jazz Ensemble
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is of a book and its film adaptation. The winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) is a stunning novel8 based on the true story of a runaway slave who, about to be recaptured, kills her infant daughter to spare her a life of slavery and is haunted by the girl’s ghost the rest of her life. Offering a ‘harrowing look at slavery and its lasting impact,’ the narrative is both ‘intensely shocking and moving’ - a visceral impact made even more disquieting by its use of multiple voices and fragmentation. In 1998, a film adaptation directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover was released to positive acclaim.
Beloved (Original Trailer, 1998)
One way or another, Beloved is a story worth your time. Give one of the versions a chance (though I’d personally recommend the novel - it’s just …better).
Remember: You can buy Beloved at Amazon, but you can also get it from your local new or used bookstore - or check it out from the library. And those options are better for everyone.
The film version streams on multiple platforms.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is inspired by the Detour and Morrison’s sixth novel, Jazz. A collection of five great jazz tracks that have recently made their way onto my stereo: ‘Journey in Satchidananda’ (Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, 1971), ‘Summertime’ (Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, 1958), ‘All the Stars’ (Franklin Trio, 2021), ‘In Love, In Vain’ (Bill Evans Trio, 1962) and ‘Chez le photographe du motel’ (Miles Davis, 1958). Enjoy the atmosphere!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Toni Morrison. I find it’s good advice not only for writing, but for any endeavour:
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next stop …
When she became a Catholic at 12, she took ‘Anthony’ as her baptismal name after Anthony of Padua - the nickname ‘Toni’ soon followed.
Toni Morrison is a towering figure in literature and this Stop only skims her life and career. The subtitle is from the NYT obituary’s description of the quality of her ‘luminous, incantatory prose.’ Sources for today’s Stop include Toni Morrison (Britannica), Toni Morrison Obituary (Guardian) and Toni Morrison Obituary (New York Times).
Both of her parents were from the South and had moved to Ohio to escape the racism. In an interview with the BBC, Morrison noted that her father in particular had been so traumatised at 15 by witnessing a double lynching in his hometown of Cartersville, Georgia that he never let a white person in his house.
While at Howard, she met and married architect Harold Morrison. Together they had two sons, but divorced in 1964.
Song of Solomon was my first Morrison novel, read as part of a Black American Literature class at Governor’s School West in 1987. I’d never read anything like it before - and it’s a testament to the quality of the course and the teachers that 17 year olds were encouraged to read it.
Considered by many critics to be her best work (the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote it ‘possesses the heightened power and resonance of myth’), the novel and its film adaptation are both today’s recommendations.
The novel is dedicated to her son Slade - with whom she had written several children’s books - who died of pancreatic cancer aged 45 in 2010.
I first read Beloved in a Southern American Literature class at university in 1989 and certain scenes haunt me to this day.