Toni Morrison

Day Ten of #BlackHistoryMonth Black Theory:

Toni Morrison

"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing." Speech on "A Humanistic View" at Portland State in 1975 "Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation." The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

"The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas." The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993 "Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?" Song of Solomon "If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression." Beloved "To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing." A Mercy

"All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Morrison laughs derisively. “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story." Interview with Poets & Writers Magazine, 2008

Links:

Books -

Beloved https://ct02210097.schoolwires.net/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=26616&dataid=28472&FileName=Beloved.pdf

Sula https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/evolution/files/2020/06/Morrison-Toni-Sula.pdf

The Bluest Eye https://www.wtps.org/cms/lib/NJ01912980/Centricity/Domain/741/The Bluest Eye.pdf Playing in the Dark

https://engl104aucsb.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/playing_in_the_dark_morrison.pdf

Home https://archive.org/details/hometonimorrison

Paradise https://archive.org/details/paradise0000morr_n5q1

The Site of Memory https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/websites.umass.edu/dist/f/16818/files/2013/03/Morrison_Site-of-Memory.pdf

All Books - https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL31120A/Toni_Morrison https://oceanofpdf.com/category/authors/toni-morrison/

Toni Morrison Encyclopedia https://www.blacktribe.org/uploads/1/8/6/5/18653164/the_toni_morrison_encyclopedia_1.pdf

Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison https://www.academia.edu/43898254/The_Cambridge_Companion_to_Toni_Morrison