From The Chicago Sun-Times…
Morrison: the truest eye
Library Honoree | Novelist aims to reveal racism’s ‘lethal’ ways
By Maudlyne Ihejirika, Staff Reporter
“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”
—Toni Morrison
Like a lioness, really, Toni Morrison—the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature—is reclining in the corner of a plush leather sofa at the Park Hyatt hotel, her mane of silver dreads cascading.
She’s in Chicago for two days of celebration of both her newest novel, A Mercy, the most recent selection in the Chicago Public Library’s “One Book, One Chicago” program, and of the Pulitzer Prize-winning East Coast author herself, who has a son living in Chicago.
“Most knowledge is narrative, except for music and math,” she says, discoursing on the power of the written word and her goal as an African-American woman writer.
“Constructing a story—writing—is an extension of what humans do to improve the human race. To me, it’s not a selfish, congratulatory process. It’s not solving problems. It’s opening them up,” she says, using as an example her very first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), about a black girl who goes mad wishing she had white folks’ eyes.
“I wanted to identify real ways in which racism creates a sort of self-loathing, and is lethal. It’s crippling. Each of my subsequent works similarly explores such themes,” she says. “The characters work it out.”
One of the most provocative and respected novelists of the 21st century and a leading black literary voice, Morrison, 79, who retired as a Princeton University professor in 2006 after 17 years, is known for her epic novels, brilliant dialogue and richly hued characters.
She’s also known for unapologetic Afrocentricism and feminism.
Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, one of four children of parents from sharecropping families who migrated north. Her interest in literature sparked at an early age, and she would earn from Howard University and Cornell bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.
A divorced mother of two, she was a senior editor at Random House for 18 years, where she is credited with bringing African-American authors to the forefront.
Her award-winning work includes 1987’s Beloved, which earned the Pulitzer and was in 2006 chosen by the New York Times as the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years. “I like different ones for different reasons,” she says when asked the favorite of her nine novels. “But the one I love the most is always the one that I’m engaged in at the moment.”
That would be A Mercy, which explores slavery in late 17th century America, when it was not yet defined by race. Like Beloved, it centers on a mother who sacrifices her daughter to save her, and that daughter’s struggle with it.
Morrison’s free lecture packed Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center Tuesday night, and tonight, at the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s Carl Sandburg Literary Awards Dinner, she’ll accept the title award and hold an onstage conversation with Chicago powerhouse Oprah Winfrey, who in 1998 produced the movie of Beloved, starring herself and Danny Glover.
“I remember she called me up on the telephone about wanting to do the movie, and I said, ‘How’d you get this number?’” says Morrison.
“I’ve always admired her, of course, like everybody else. Her instincts are not just good, but elevating. Her Book Club changed the literary world. I mean, here she is on TV telling people to turn off the TV and read a book. It’s phenomenal.
“We’re not really friends in that way,” she adds in that political-correctness-isn’t-my-thing style. “I’m not close to her, but she can always call on me for anything, and I believe that I can call on her.”
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