I majored in English lit at university and one of my early requirements was a single author course. Having little general knowledge of famous authors, I chose the Toni Morrison class at random. I remember on the first day being surprised to find our that Toni Morrison was a woman and that her writing had such a strong focus on race and slavery. I was rather intimidated.
Turned out to be one of the best classes I had during those years. It was a very small group (I feel like only ten people or something) and there was a lot of really excellent discussion about the books. Jazz stood out to me as one of her best works, the focus shift in narrators throughout the novel was, I think, my first real exposure to the "unreliable narrator" concept and it made the story so powerful.
I had a similar experience growing up in the mostly white suburbs of Baltimore. We read Beloved junior year and it was absolutely devastating. It opened my eyes to the deep, unhealed wounds of slavery and that sort of tumultuous, all-consuming pain. It was a difficult book to read at that age—I can't imagine any age when it would be easy to read—and I appreciate that we were asked to sit with it.
Another book that had a similar effect on me was Yukio Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" about a boy growing up gay in 1930–50s Japan. I don't know that he ever actually says he's gay and you get this feeling that he doesn't even have the language to describe himself, let alone any kind of framework or support network. It was described to me by the friend who recommended it as "devastatingly sad" and I agree. He was absolutely, completely, and utterly fucked from the moment he was born and there's nothing he could do about it. The book threw me off for weeks. I highly recommend it.
I love reading, but only a handful of books have really changed the way I look at the world. The Bluest Eye was one of them.
Minor spoiler: in the bluest eye a young black girl obsesses over a white female doll with blue eyes. Before I read it, I never considered the impact that the idealization of white beauty could have on minorities. After reading that book, I realized how important it was for children to be able to look up to role models (fictional or otherwise) that look like them.
In my own life, I have had my own share of fantasy role models (I am a huge Tolkien fan, and when I was younger I loved all things fantasy) that shaped my own identity, and after reading The Bluest Eye I had to consider the idea: how would those books have affected me if all characters looked nothing like me? I do not think the effect would have been positive.
To be fair, Tolkien explicitly set out to create a Northern European pre-history or mythology. I am not sure if he even considered non-European readers as his audience.
A good parallel might be the love many Westerners have for anime.
(Disclaimer: I have not read any “actual” work by Toni Morrison, so my knowledge is limited to the following, which I wanted to share.)
There's a great profile of the editor Robert Gottlieb who worked with her, including a few wonderful quotes from Toni Morrison revealing how she worked (search the page for "Morrison"; there are about 10 quotes), from 1994: https://web.archive.org/web/20161227170954/http://www.thepar... — the whole thing is a great read even if you don't care about Toni Morrison (every lover of reading is likely to enjoy it), but if you do, it may just be a few snippets that you might have otherwise missed as it's not “about” Toni Morrison.
> [Morrison] Writing my first two books, The Bluest Eye and Sula, I had the anxiety of a new writer who needs to make sure every sentence is exactly the right one. Sometimes that produces a kind of precious, jeweled quality—a tightness, which I particularly wanted in Sula. Then after I finished Sula and was working on the third book, Song of Solomon, Bob said to me, You can loosen, open up. Your writing doesn’t have to be so contained; it can be wider. I’m not sure these were his exact words, but I know that the consequence of the remarks was that I did relax and begin to open up to possibilities. It was because I was able to open up to those possibilities that I began to think things like, What would happen if indeed I followed this strange notion or image or picture I had in my mind of this woman who had no navel . . . whereas normally I would have dismissed such an idea as recklessness. It was as if he had said, Be reckless in your imagination.
> [Gottlieb] I remember the discussion with Toni as she was beginning Song of Solomon, because although we always did some marginal cosmetic work on her manuscripts, obviously a writer of her powers and discrimination doesn’t need a lot of help with her prose. I think I served Toni best by encouraging her—helping to free her to be herself. The only other real help I gave to her was noneditorial: I encouraged her to stop editing and to write full-time, something I knew she wanted to do. As I remember it, I reassured her about her finances—but what I was really saying was, You’re not an editor who does some writing, you’re a writer—acknowledge it; there’s nothing to be scared of. We always understood each other—two editors, two lovers of reading, and exactly the same age.
[…]
> [Morrison] Writing for me is just a very sustained process of reading. The only difference is that writing a book might take three or four years, and I’m doing it. I never wrote a line until after I became an editor, and only then because I wanted to read something that I couldn’t find. That was the first book I wrote.
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
As a student of scholar and literature and a former professor of the same, this is a sad day for me. I've taught many of Morrison's novels and learned more with every reading.
Morrison is a giant among writers, and the world is poorer for her passing.
The NYTimes obituary titled "Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88" is unavoidably narrow. Toni Morrison's novels contain universes. [0]
Like several others in this thread, I read Beloved at an 11th grade student in literature class.
It was the most humbling thing I remember reading. Moving, despite no personal context for the characters' experiences. Written beautifully without feeling over written.
It made me realize how far I was, and probably would ever be, from proper writing talent.
My first intro to Morrison was thru 'The Bluest Eye'. Afterwards I read many of her books incl 'Beloved'. I loved all of them.
One thing I could however never understand was how a person with such deep insights into the African American experience could call Bill Clinton, 'the first Black President'. I thought at first maybe there was something I didn't understand. But as years passed, I've been increasingly feeling that perhaps that wasn't the case.
I think she meant that in a very straightforward way: that he was the first US president to represent the African American citizens of the US in any real way.
That doesn't mean he wasn't a flawed president, just they he was their president in a way that hadn't been experienced before.
I still don’t understand why she called Clinton the first black president. I think people confused his charm for respect and understanding. I believer Bill Clinton was the first presidential candidate to get Black voters. Until then most candidates would rely on black celebrity and community leaders to meet black voters. Not only would he meet them in churches and community centers, he was really comfortable doing it. Most white politicians would do an awkward stump speech in a church or center with an eye on the exit. And that wasn’t the case with Clinton. He was a natural shmoozer.
tldr: It's complicated. But to over-simplify: the Clintons had black friends, seemed to genuinely believe that black people were just as qualified for prestigious/important jobs as anyone else, and Bill Clinton had both a personal background and expressed himself in ways that resonated with many black Americans.
None of that had ever been even a little bit true of an American President before. And it was a big deal.
All of that is easy to forget, now, after we elected an actual black person President. But man, the 1990s were a different time. Lots of things are bad (really, really bad) now. But lots of things have changed in the last 25 years, too.
I had to read The Bluest Eye in college. That is one book I'll never read again, and that's because it's so brutally honest about the characters' experiences. It's too real.
Great book. Highly recommended. I'm afraid to read any more of her books, but I probably should.
It contrasts with The Awakening, also required reading. It's like the other side of The Bluest Eye. What did Edna Pontellier's awakening cost the black servants who enabled it?
A lot of African-American fiction can have that effect. Corregidora by Gayl Jones is a book that blew me away and made me really upset. It took me almost twenty years to read it a second time.
We read her book Song of Solomon in my senior high school English class. It was one of my favorites of the class, along with Catch-22. I don't think I really got even close to 100% of what it was about, but her writing was just so gripping and beautiful, I still enjoyed the ride.
Years later I read Beloved and I was able to appreciate it much more. I should really read more of her work.
I don't often feel a strong emotion when a famous person dies, but this one got me. The beauty in her books is staggering, I read them with no preconceptions (which is often hard to do with famous books) and was completely blown away. As pure literature divorced from any reality they'd still be all-time great works, and their connection to the real experience of black people in America raises them to even greater heights.
From everything I have read she was a wonderful person aside from her writing. Thoughtful and careful, influential without being loud.
I think the world will miss her, and we will always have her words.
I met Toni Morrison when I was 12. She was kinda rude to me, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t see her as anything but an accomplished author. I’ve always wondered about that moment if she intentionally was rude or was just anxious from being in the spotlight at the time. I don’t know why I thought during all these years that I would get to meet her again.. I was planning to be more adept at conversation with her. Correlate coding to historic writings.. but this post is a sobering wake up call.
Phone your mum, tell her you love her. My mom was inspired by Toni Morrison.
One of those silly toxic grievance ideas, that you should only enjoy fiction when the protagonist looks like you, has the same gender and so on.
Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes? It was just a work of fiction, after all. Do white girls obsess over black dolls? We have a black doll, that my white wife grew up with. I don't think it disturbed her in any way.
Would you please stop taking HN threads further into ideological flamewar? It's tedious and off topic here, and amounts to vandalism. We've had to ask you this before.
Edit: actually, since you did this twice in as many days, I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll use HN as intended in the future.
If it doesn't matter, then why are fantasy characters (even today, even in Harry Potter which is extremely recent) overwhelmingly white? If people enjoyed protagonists regardless of their ethnicity or gender, then why isn't fiction more diverse? Why are almost all DC and Marvel superheroes white males? Etc.
> Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes?
There are entire industries built around helping people of color look and act more white. One of the early post-abolition black businesses sold hair straightening products. Toni Morrison's writing was based on real lived experiences.
You don't know what you don't know. Now you know there are things outside your knowledge and experience. Take this as an opportunity to look deeper.
Personally, I do enjoy finally seeing more queer characters on TV and in movies who aren't stereotypes and who aren't killed off to make cisgender and heterosexual people cry. I know a lot of people of color who are ecstatic over improving representation in the same way.
> I had to consider the idea: how would those books have affected me if all characters looked nothing like me?
FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, people I've only read about - are not white males.
I guess in my case it was more important to relate to their background and their skills (or lack of ;-) than who their parents were, and where they grew up.
I'm black African. And most of my role models don't look like me. Musashi, Taleb, Frederick Douglas is in there as an exception etc. But when I look at someone who has accomplished what I want to the first thing that adds to motivation is not that they look like me...this is a wildly debilitating mindset I know it exists but lets not make it out to be healthy.
> FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, people I've only read about - are not white males.
But you didn't and don't lack for options.
I'm a straight white man from America. No matter what personal, family, and economic difficulties I've faced:
- I have literal decades of seeing other white men in a variety of roles. I can pick and choose from the stereotypes I want to put in high regard, emulate, or dismiss, not 3 or 4.
- growing up, there was no blanket treatment of me or people others decided I was like outside of choices I made. I could adopt "redneck" habits/dress, or "frat boy", or "nerd", or "jock", but I had control over whether I was identified as a "thug", or " aggressive", or "professional".
- Because "my" culture was broadcast everywhere (TV/movies/books/magazines), I was never regarded as "weird" or "threatening" because people weren't accustomed to anything I'd do or say or how I'd dress.
As a kid, I was freaked out by the first black person I met, because his palms were a lighter color than the rest of his skin. That's a stupid thing to be freaked out by, but it was _different_ to me because I didn't see it anywhere. It wasn't "normal" My skin color, in return, was very "normal" looking to him, because fish-belly-pale is hardly a skin color that is hard to see in any community - just turn on the TV. Growing up in a more diverse area I would have seen more and wouldn't have had that reaction - but turn on the TV and it was still monochromatic.
As a kid I regularly teased a girl in my grade (a friend!) for her hairstyle, because it wasn't "normal". Of course, it was quite normal - if you have those genes, or see anyone that does. Again, put me in a more diverse world and I'd have seen it...but what did she see on TV? in movies? on magazine covers?
And there were "black" TV shows, and "black" magazines...but everything else wasn't "white" - it was "normal". Which meant "not black".
I had, and have, the liberty of choice because "normal" includes me, and I can choose if I want to include it. But if "normal" was defined to exclude me, what kinds of choices would I have? I might become a "well-spoken" and "clean" black man!
Very famous author. She won the pulitzer prize for fiction. Her books are both beautifully written and hard to read because of their often brutal depiction of the racism African-American's experience in the U.S.
[+] [-] cdubzzz|6 years ago|reply
Turned out to be one of the best classes I had during those years. It was a very small group (I feel like only ten people or something) and there was a lot of really excellent discussion about the books. Jazz stood out to me as one of her best works, the focus shift in narrators throughout the novel was, I think, my first real exposure to the "unreliable narrator" concept and it made the story so powerful.
[+] [-] tyre|6 years ago|reply
Another book that had a similar effect on me was Yukio Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" about a boy growing up gay in 1930–50s Japan. I don't know that he ever actually says he's gay and you get this feeling that he doesn't even have the language to describe himself, let alone any kind of framework or support network. It was described to me by the friend who recommended it as "devastatingly sad" and I agree. He was absolutely, completely, and utterly fucked from the moment he was born and there's nothing he could do about it. The book threw me off for weeks. I highly recommend it.
[+] [-] cneurotic|6 years ago|reply
"Look. Look where your hands are. Now."
[+] [-] magpi3|6 years ago|reply
Minor spoiler: in the bluest eye a young black girl obsesses over a white female doll with blue eyes. Before I read it, I never considered the impact that the idealization of white beauty could have on minorities. After reading that book, I realized how important it was for children to be able to look up to role models (fictional or otherwise) that look like them.
In my own life, I have had my own share of fantasy role models (I am a huge Tolkien fan, and when I was younger I loved all things fantasy) that shaped my own identity, and after reading The Bluest Eye I had to consider the idea: how would those books have affected me if all characters looked nothing like me? I do not think the effect would have been positive.
[+] [-] cgh|6 years ago|reply
A good parallel might be the love many Westerners have for anime.
[+] [-] otabdeveloper2|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] svat|6 years ago|reply
There's a great profile of the editor Robert Gottlieb who worked with her, including a few wonderful quotes from Toni Morrison revealing how she worked (search the page for "Morrison"; there are about 10 quotes), from 1994: https://web.archive.org/web/20161227170954/http://www.thepar... — the whole thing is a great read even if you don't care about Toni Morrison (every lover of reading is likely to enjoy it), but if you do, it may just be a few snippets that you might have otherwise missed as it's not “about” Toni Morrison.
> [Morrison] Writing my first two books, The Bluest Eye and Sula, I had the anxiety of a new writer who needs to make sure every sentence is exactly the right one. Sometimes that produces a kind of precious, jeweled quality—a tightness, which I particularly wanted in Sula. Then after I finished Sula and was working on the third book, Song of Solomon, Bob said to me, You can loosen, open up. Your writing doesn’t have to be so contained; it can be wider. I’m not sure these were his exact words, but I know that the consequence of the remarks was that I did relax and begin to open up to possibilities. It was because I was able to open up to those possibilities that I began to think things like, What would happen if indeed I followed this strange notion or image or picture I had in my mind of this woman who had no navel . . . whereas normally I would have dismissed such an idea as recklessness. It was as if he had said, Be reckless in your imagination.
> [Gottlieb] I remember the discussion with Toni as she was beginning Song of Solomon, because although we always did some marginal cosmetic work on her manuscripts, obviously a writer of her powers and discrimination doesn’t need a lot of help with her prose. I think I served Toni best by encouraging her—helping to free her to be herself. The only other real help I gave to her was noneditorial: I encouraged her to stop editing and to write full-time, something I knew she wanted to do. As I remember it, I reassured her about her finances—but what I was really saying was, You’re not an editor who does some writing, you’re a writer—acknowledge it; there’s nothing to be scared of. We always understood each other—two editors, two lovers of reading, and exactly the same age.
[…]
> [Morrison] Writing for me is just a very sustained process of reading. The only difference is that writing a book might take three or four years, and I’m doing it. I never wrote a line until after I became an editor, and only then because I wanted to read something that I couldn’t find. That was the first book I wrote.
[+] [-] dnjdrbdhdbs|6 years ago|reply
“How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.”
[+] [-] mistersquid|6 years ago|reply
Morrison is a giant among writers, and the world is poorer for her passing.
The NYTimes obituary titled "Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88" is unavoidably narrow. Toni Morrison's novels contain universes. [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead....
[+] [-] phasetransition|6 years ago|reply
It was the most humbling thing I remember reading. Moving, despite no personal context for the characters' experiences. Written beautifully without feeling over written.
It made me realize how far I was, and probably would ever be, from proper writing talent.
[+] [-] Insuranceman|6 years ago|reply
One thing I could however never understand was how a person with such deep insights into the African American experience could call Bill Clinton, 'the first Black President'. I thought at first maybe there was something I didn't understand. But as years passed, I've been increasingly feeling that perhaps that wasn't the case.
[+] [-] ska|6 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean he wasn't a flawed president, just they he was their president in a way that hadn't been experienced before.
[+] [-] yardie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwindla|6 years ago|reply
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/10/05/comment-6543
tldr: It's complicated. But to over-simplify: the Clintons had black friends, seemed to genuinely believe that black people were just as qualified for prestigious/important jobs as anyone else, and Bill Clinton had both a personal background and expressed himself in ways that resonated with many black Americans.
None of that had ever been even a little bit true of an American President before. And it was a big deal.
All of that is easy to forget, now, after we elected an actual black person President. But man, the 1990s were a different time. Lots of things are bad (really, really bad) now. But lots of things have changed in the last 25 years, too.
[+] [-] goto11|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kye|6 years ago|reply
Great book. Highly recommended. I'm afraid to read any more of her books, but I probably should.
It contrasts with The Awakening, also required reading. It's like the other side of The Bluest Eye. What did Edna Pontellier's awakening cost the black servants who enabled it?
[+] [-] magpi3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autarch|6 years ago|reply
Years later I read Beloved and I was able to appreciate it much more. I should really read more of her work.
[+] [-] omot|6 years ago|reply
Unrelated, but it's kind of scary how many comments have, if not an undertone, just straight up racism.
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
From everything I have read she was a wonderful person aside from her writing. Thoughtful and careful, influential without being loud.
I think the world will miss her, and we will always have her words.
[+] [-] o-__-o|6 years ago|reply
Phone your mum, tell her you love her. My mom was inspired by Toni Morrison.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] magic_beans|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bossnayamoss|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goobynight|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] momokoko|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] takeout|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] bubblewrap|6 years ago|reply
Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes? It was just a work of fiction, after all. Do white girls obsess over black dolls? We have a black doll, that my white wife grew up with. I don't think it disturbed her in any way.
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
Edit: actually, since you did this twice in as many days, I've banned your account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll use HN as intended in the future.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20626161.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] magpi3|6 years ago|reply
> Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes?
Apparently, yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark#Doll_e...
[+] [-] gowld|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kye|6 years ago|reply
You don't know what you don't know. Now you know there are things outside your knowledge and experience. Take this as an opportunity to look deeper.
Personally, I do enjoy finally seeing more queer characters on TV and in movies who aren't stereotypes and who aren't killed off to make cisgender and heterosexual people cry. I know a lot of people of color who are ecstatic over improving representation in the same way.
[+] [-] eitland|6 years ago|reply
FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, people I've only read about - are not white males.
I guess in my case it was more important to relate to their background and their skills (or lack of ;-) than who their parents were, and where they grew up.
[+] [-] rc_hadoken|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergothus|6 years ago|reply
But you didn't and don't lack for options.
I'm a straight white man from America. No matter what personal, family, and economic difficulties I've faced:
- I have literal decades of seeing other white men in a variety of roles. I can pick and choose from the stereotypes I want to put in high regard, emulate, or dismiss, not 3 or 4.
- growing up, there was no blanket treatment of me or people others decided I was like outside of choices I made. I could adopt "redneck" habits/dress, or "frat boy", or "nerd", or "jock", but I had control over whether I was identified as a "thug", or " aggressive", or "professional".
- Because "my" culture was broadcast everywhere (TV/movies/books/magazines), I was never regarded as "weird" or "threatening" because people weren't accustomed to anything I'd do or say or how I'd dress.
As a kid, I was freaked out by the first black person I met, because his palms were a lighter color than the rest of his skin. That's a stupid thing to be freaked out by, but it was _different_ to me because I didn't see it anywhere. It wasn't "normal" My skin color, in return, was very "normal" looking to him, because fish-belly-pale is hardly a skin color that is hard to see in any community - just turn on the TV. Growing up in a more diverse area I would have seen more and wouldn't have had that reaction - but turn on the TV and it was still monochromatic.
As a kid I regularly teased a girl in my grade (a friend!) for her hairstyle, because it wasn't "normal". Of course, it was quite normal - if you have those genes, or see anyone that does. Again, put me in a more diverse world and I'd have seen it...but what did she see on TV? in movies? on magazine covers?
And there were "black" TV shows, and "black" magazines...but everything else wasn't "white" - it was "normal". Which meant "not black".
I had, and have, the liberty of choice because "normal" includes me, and I can choose if I want to include it. But if "normal" was defined to exclude me, what kinds of choices would I have? I might become a "well-spoken" and "clean" black man!
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|6 years ago|reply
Growing up I identified with many people who I know are not me. And some of the things I identify as bring me great discomfort.
[+] [-] mlindner|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] magpi3|6 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
[+] [-] gowld|6 years ago|reply
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nobel-laureate-toni-morrison-ha...
discussed on HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625132