novelist can condense the en-
tire novel into an intense first
chapter that goes down hot
and strong like a good whis-
key. The more than 300 pages
that follow are the intoxicat-
ing effects of that first pow-
erful experience.
Morrison’s characters live with me the way bib-
lical figures were always in the back of my grand-
mother’s mind when she needed to make a point.
As Grandmother might say, “Remember Job” or
“Don’t forget when Ezekiel saw the wheel,” so I
spouted the cautionary tales abounding in Mor-
rison’s novels. There is Eva Peace, in Sula, who set
her drug- addicted son afire after she dreamed he
was trying to climb back into her womb. At the fu-
neral of her best friend, Nel realizes that all these
years it was Sula she missed, not the husband with
whom Sula had an affair. No woman wants to be
like Hagar, in Song of Solomon, whom her lover lik-
ens to the “third beer,” the one you drink just be-
cause it’s there. And then there are the great loves.
Grandmother had Ruth and Boaz in the Bible, and
I had Paul D, who treasures Sethe because she is a
“friend of [his] mind” in Be-
loved. Has there ever been
a commitment deeper than
Sixo’s with the “Thirty-Mile
Woman,” so named because
this is how far he travels on
foot to see her for a brief
visit before returning home
to the plantation where he is enslaved?
My favorite song in the Baptist hymnal is “May
the Work I’ve Done Speak for Me.” As we remem-
ber Toni Morrison, I believe this should be engraved
upon her tombstone. Morrison didn’t peddle her
personality, performing the role of a great writer, yet
she was the most formidable mind of our times. She
is best known as the author of 11 astonishing nov-
els, garnering the many laurels on which she refused
to rest. She also wrote works of non fiction, some of
which are so dense and intricate that they sometimes
even seem ruthless as she confronts racism and its
collateral effects on society. Yet this was not her en-
tire contribution to the world of letters. She worked
as an editor at Random House, mid wifing landmark
works. She edited Gayl Jones, Angela Davis and Toni
Cade Bambara. She compiled The Black Book, which△
From top: Morrison presented with
the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Barack Obama in 2012;
with partygoers, including Angela
Davis and Oprah Winfrey, in 1994