Toni Morrison

My Day

By Dr. J. Ester Davis

Remembering Toni  Morrison….

“I’m writing for black people, in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14 year old colored girl from Lorain, Ohio.  I don’t have to apologize or consider myself limited because I don’t (write about white people) – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books.  The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it”.

“Love is never any better than the lover”.

“There is no such thing as race.  None.  There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically.”  “Racism is a construct, a social construct. Racism will disappear when it’s no longer profitable.  And when that happens, it’ll be gone.  But for the moment, people make a lot of money off of it.”

Toni Morrison, an American Writer, died this week at 88 years of age.  She had a rich impactful and insightful career with her powerful pen and mastermind.  She was the first black female writer at Random House.  Her celebrated work “Beloved” was turned into a movie in 1998 by Oprah.  In 2012 President Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 2016 the PEN Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction was received by the famed writer.

Toni Morrison, a Howard Alumni, novelist, teacher, professor emeritus at Princeton University received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her life will live on for many centuries.  Look for the 2019 Documentary:  “The Pieces I am”.

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