#toni morrison

[firstfullmoon]

writers and their cats: toni morrison / albert camus / patricia highsmith / ursula k. le guin / ernest hemingway / iris murdoch / tove jansson / joyce carol oates

[bobbole]

Toni Morrison

[feignedremote]

In the other [1979] profile, in Vogue, [Toni] Morrison spoke of a white American reader who had "told her how difficult it was to understand black culture in her books—it was so removed from his experience." She had responded: "Boy, you must have had a hell of a time with Beowulf!" The Vogue interviewer, missing the wit in this retort, went on to comment: "Morrison has no patience with people who plead ignorance; but then, she does not pride herself on being a patient woman. 'I find myself being more and more difficult,' she says. 'It's something I really relish.'" Even Morrison's literary difficulty and the pleasure she took in it was translated here into personal difficulty, a moral failing: How dare she be impatient! Well, wouldn't you be?

Namwali Serpell, On Morrison

[saydesole]

Black Authors

Happy Black History is Everyday

Toni Morrison 1931-2019

James Baldwin 1924-1987

Octavia E Butler 1947-2006

Langston Hughes 1901-1967

Maya Angelou 1928-2014

Ralph Ellison 1914-1994

Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960

W.E.B Du Bois 1868-1963

[genderoutlaws]

tinyurl.com/Ms-Morrison

second link if tinyurl stops working

[virgomoon]

toni morrison novels.

[makingsenseofwhathappened]

— Song of Solomon (1977)

This line seems to hit harder the older I get. And I can't seem to stop getting any older these days... ; )

In Song of Solomon, which I fully recommend, Morrison performs nothing short of open-heart surgery on her subjects – souls lost after the world spent years enforcing its own heartless rhythm.

What stuck with me was her warning under the story: hiding in smallness can be safety and silence might mean survival – but only for a time. To reclaim your confidence and your self, at some point it's gonna take a radical act, which will be YOUR OWN.

Check it out if you can, my Tumblrs. Dynamite read. XO

Bonus read: Why We Blame Ourselves

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

was reading Toni Morrison's essay "Black Matters" (as it appears in the collection Playing in the Dark) and could not help but think of the many, many tedious responses I've received to certain posts on this dire webbed site regarding the reading of Black women authors