Hi, I’m Clint Smith and this is Crash Course Black American History. The difficulty for me in writing is to craft language that can work quietly on a page for a reader who doesn’t hear anything. Tony Morrison said in a 1993 interview with the Paris Review, “Now for that one has to work very carefully with what is in between the words, what is not said.”
I first encountered Toni Morrison’s work in high school. It was most often atop a sea of unmade sheets on my bed, with two pillows propping me up against the headboard. I used one of those cheap drugstore pens to underline the sections that most resonated. It was tough for me then to read in places where there was a lot of noise; I preferred reading and writing in my room where I could listen to the soft scratch of ink on paper and a ceiling fan whirring above.
Which is to say, I first encountered Morrison’s words in the silence that she alludes to. In this series, we’ve talked about a number of authors who have used their work to share the lives and experiences of black Americans on the page, and the person we’re discussing today, Tony Morrison, is one of the best writers that this country has ever produced. She changed the literary landscape; she challenged the traditionally white male canon of literature, and she did it on her own terms.
Let’s start the show. I don’t know how else to put it: Toni Morrison is a legend. She published everything from plays to children’s books; her novels earned many prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was also the first black American woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature.
Much of her work centers on the stories of black people at different points throughout American history. She talks about their highs and their lows, their triumphs and their failures, and the consequences of racism in everyday life. Her work emphasizes the loss, memory, psychological trauma, and joy of black life. She wrote in ways that remain enjoyable to everyday readers, while inspiring writers of all races. She helped highlight black American literature, serving as a catalyst for it to be nationally and internationally recognized.
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in 1931. Chloe grew up in Lorraine, Ohio, in an environment where segregation was not the law, but the invisible lines were understood. Despite her family struggling in the aftermath of the Great Depression, she credits her childhood for motivating her to eventually write. She heard African-American folklore and music, learned about African-American cultural rituals, and grew up working class. At the age of 12, Chloe converted to Catholicism and was baptized under the name Anthony for Saint Anthony of Padua. It was under the nickname Tony that she would become world famous.
In 1949, Tony graduated with honors from Lorraine High School and then attended Howard University. There, she experienced the dangers and horrors of the segregated South while touring with the Howard Players, an acting club. She also connected with other black writers, activists and artists. In 1953, Tony graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English and then went on to complete her Master of Arts in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. After obtaining her Masters, she taught English at various HBCUs. In 1958, she returned to Howard University as a lecturer and joined a writing group, where she began working on her first novel.
Tony spent seven years at Howard University, got divorced, and then became an editor of the textbook division of Random House Publishing. She quickly moved up the ranks and eventually became a senior editor, the only black American woman to hold that position in the company at the time. She used her power and influence to publish many books by black American writers, including Toni K. Bambara, Gail Jones, June Jordan, and Angela Davis.
In 1970, at the age of 39, Tony published her first novel, The Bluest Eye. It was about Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who believed her life would be better if she had blue eyes like the white people around her. The book was met with mixed reviews, but Tony Morrison stated in later interviews that the book’s reception was very similar to how other characters treated her main character in the novel.
Three years later, Tony published her second novel, Sula. In this book, Morrison explored morality, ethics, and relationships through the friendship between two black women. It was met with a much more positive reception than The Bluest Eye and was even nominated for a National Book Award.
In 1977, Tony published her third novel, Song of Solomon, and continued to put her own work in the spotlight. os the room like a wave of energy and that I was so very fortunate to have been there
She was a household name in the Black community, and her first truly commercially successful book was The Bluest Eye (1970). It was the first book written by a Black American author to be selected by the Book of the Month Club since Richard Wright’s Native Son in the 1940s. She received a National Book Critics Circle Award along with many other accolades, and the book became a staple of American literature in classrooms, among academics, and for general readers. This success encouraged Morrison to become a full-time writer.
In 1987, Morrison released what many considered to be her magnum opus, Beloved. The book is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, an African-American woman who was living in slavery. The main character of Beloved is Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman who is constantly haunted by her dead child after making the gut-wrenching decision to kill her children rather than see them become enslaved (though three of her children survived, her infant daughter did not). Morrison dedicated the book to the millions of Africans killed during the course of the Atlantic slave trade. The title of the book is taken from Romans chapter 9, which states, “those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved”. The story explores themes of loss, morality, and the impossible choices that befall the oppressed.
The book became an enormous critical and commercial success. It was a bestseller for 25 weeks and won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. From the 1980s onward, Morrison’s literary prowess impacted the minds and hearts of much of the world. She continued to win awards and honors throughout her life, and in 1989 she became a professor in the creative writing program at Princeton University. In 1993, she became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1996, she was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to give the Jefferson Lecture, and also won the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Oprah Winfrey really loved her. It was Oprah who helped bring Tony Morrison’s work even further into the mainstream and she selected four of Morrison’s novels in six years for her book club, with an average of 13 million viewers watching these book club segments. The support from Oprah helped Morrison sell millions of copies and gave her an even bigger sales boost than she experienced when she won the Nobel Prize. In 1998, Beloved was even made into a movie starring Oprah, as well as Tandy Way Newton and Danny Glover.
Morrison received a dozen honorary degrees and was a guest curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was awarded to her by the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama. In total, she wrote 11 novels, nine non-fiction works, five children’s books, two short stories, and two plays throughout her life. She died on August 5th, 2019 in New York City.
Several years ago before she passed away, I had the opportunity to see Morrison give a lecture in person. It was an extraordinary experience to physically be in the presence of one of the greatest writers to have ever lived. When Morrison came onto the stage, the audience rose to their feet and gave a resounding round of applause. Whistles and cheers ricocheted across the vastness of the room. Morrison was brought to a table at the front of the stage, cloaked in a red cloth that had a small glass of water at its corner. At 85 years old, she was still remarkably lucid. As I listened to her speak, I thought of my future children; how one day they will read Morrison and how they might marvel at the fact that their father once shared a room with this writer who seemed to belong to another world. I will tell them that when she spoke, the vows stretched across the room like a wave of energy and that I was so very fortunate to have been there.