Section:GDN 1N PaGe:5 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 21:03 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Guardian •
5Times hailed how Morrison charted
the workings of “a cultural engine that
seems to have been designed specifi -
cally to murder possibilities” in prose
“so precise, so faithful to speech and
so charged with pain and wonder that
the novel becomes poetry” – a descrip-
tion that dogged the writer for the rest
of her career.
Speaking to the New Republic in
1981 , she said wanted to write books
that were “not ... only, even merely,
literary” or she would “defeat [her]
purposes, defeat [her] audience”.
“That’s why I don’t like to have
someone call my books ‘poetic’,” she
said, “because it has the connotation
of luxuriating richness. I wanted to
restore the language black people
spoke to its original power. That calls
for a language that is rich but not
ornate.”
Morrison’s reputation gradually
built as she forged the language of
her family and neighbours into three
more novels, resigning from Random
House in 1983 to devote herself to writ-
ing full-time. The publication in 1987
of Beloved, a powerful story set in the
middle of the 19th century of a slave
who kills her own baby, cemented her
status as a national fi gure. When the
novel failed to improve on its short-
listing for the National Book Award,
48 writers signed a letter of protest
accusing the publishing industry of
“oversight and harmful whimsy”.
“Despite the international stat-
ure of Toni Morrison, she has yet to
receive the national recognition that
her fi ve major works of fi ction entirely
deserve,” they wrote. “She has yet
to receive the keystone honors of
the National Book Award or the
Pulitzer prize.”
Five months later Beloved won the
Pulitzer, unleashing a tide of awards.
Morrison would become the first
black woman to win the Nobel prize
in literature in 1993. She also won the
National Book Foundation medal in
1996 and a National Humanities medal
four years later. Morrison continued
exploring the African American expe-
rience – a project she described to the
New York Times in 2015 as “writing
without the white gaze” – in novels
stretching covering the 17th century
up to the present day.
She was never afraid to speak up on
issues confronting the US, defending
president Bill Clinton from criticism
in 1998 by calling him the nation’s
“fi rst black president” , or reacting
to the shooting of Travyon Martin by
outlining the “two things I want to see
in life. One is a white kid shot in the
back by a cop. Never happened. The
second thing I want to see: a record of
any white man in the entire history of
the world who has been convicted of
raping a black woman. Just one.”
Speaking after winning her Nobel
win in 1993 , Morrison spelled out the
dangers of “oppressive language [that]
does more than represent violence; it
is violence; does more than represent
the limits of knowledge; it limits
knowledge” and off ered instead a
positive vision of “word-work” which
“makes meaning that secures our dif-
ference, our human diff erence – the
way in which we are like no other life”.
“We die,” she said. “That may be the
meaning of life. But we do language.
That may be the measure of our lives.”Journal Diane Abbott Page 4
Journal Obituary Pages 8-9 ▲ Toni Morrison, left, with Maya Angelou at the 2013 National Book Awards
dinner and ceremony in New York City PHOTOGRAPH: AVALON.RED
▲ Laughing with Barack Obama
in 2012 before being awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom
PHOTOGRAPH: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG
▼ Toni Morrison continued to
produce works, such as The Source
of Self-Regard, well into her 80s
PHOTOGRAPH: NATAN DVIR/POLARIS/EYEVINEAppreciation
‘Many of us feel we have
lost our literary mother’
Chigozie ObiomaI
t was with a heavy heart that
I woke up, like many, to the
news of the passing of the
great African American writer
Toni Morrison. As I have
mourned and digested the
news, my reaction has gone slowly
from shock to dismay, then to a
sense of inchoate peace.
If we judge being old as a more
feeble state, or characterised by a
gradual withdrawal from work , then
Morrison, like most great writers,
had not become old. At the age of
88, she had continued to give us her
stories and thoughts. The Source of
Self-Regard – a further exploration
on some of the broader themes of
race and dignity that she explored
throughout her life in novels such
as Beloved and The Bluest Eye – was
released only a few months ago, as
was her fi nal essay collection Mouth
Full of Blood. And until recently,
we have seen a steady stream of
novels from her, including God Help
the Child, which was published on
the same day as my debut novel
The Fishermen, in 2015. There
was no sign that the end of our
constant supply from her reserve
of wonderful stories and ideas was
anywhere near.
With the death of Morrison, many
writers today feel like we have lost
our literary mother.
Although I grew up in a town
in Nigeria, the two fi rst American
writers I ever read were black:
Richard Wright and Morrison. I read
Black Boy around the age of 11 or 12,
then Morrison’s The Bluest Eye a
year or two later. It is a devastating
story of a black girl who is destroyed
by the low self-esteem imposed on
her by a society in which her race
and culture is diminished as ugly
and unworthy.
As a young boy in Nigeria, then
slowly coming to the understanding
that Africans were perceived by the
rest of the world as being just like the
black people in The Bluest Eye, I saw
the light in this grim story. I realised
that if we begin to look deeper intoourselves and take pride in our
heritage, we will see the true beauty
of who we are; what the rest of the
world says about us, or how they see
us, will be unable to kill our spirit.
Morrison herself credited the great
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe for
helping her discover this, what she
called “the freedom to write.” But it
was more a freedom to see that we
can tell our own stories – and by so
doing, lift our people.
Refl ecting on her life, I feel a
sense of peace because I know I have
learned a lot from Morrison.
On the craft level, I believed
until this morning that she was the
greatest living American writer
(an honour Cormac McCarthy now
holds), and one of the best prose
stylists in the world, on the same
plane as Martin Amis, Wole Soyinka,
Salman Rushdie and others. She
set out to do “unimaginable”
things with the English language, a
language she considered “ at once
rich and deeply racist .”
Counting myself as one of many
writers from former colonial states
who now write in the English
language, which has become our
national tongue, we have had to
fi nd ways to subdue and conquer it,
and bring it into submission to our
cultural sensibilities.
Part of that conquering is not
only writing in the English language
the way we desire, but also what
we desire. This was exactly what
Morrison did throughout her life. In
a time when African stories are not
seen as important unless they are
set outside Africa or created to align
with western sensibilities, Morrison
encouraged me to write about
African traditional religion, culture
and philosophies without reserve,
even if the rest of the world – and
even Africans themselves – see it as
backward and unpleasant.
I fi nd peace because a new
generation of black and African
writers will continue to do just that,
encouraged by the great work she
has left us – and for this, I thank her.Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra
of Minorities is nominated for
this year’s Booker prizeToni Morrison in quotes
‘Language may be the
measure of our lives’‘If there’s a book that you
want to read, but it hasn’t
been written yet, then you
must write it.’‘ I’m writing for black
people, in the same way
that Tolstoy was not
writing for me, a 14-year-
old coloured girl from
Lorain, Ohio. I don’t have
to apologise 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.’‘I feel totally curious and
alive and in control. And
almost ... magnifi cent,
when I write.’‘Writing is really a way of
thinking, not just feeling but
thinking about things that
are disparate, unresolved,
mysterious, problematic or
just sweet.‘‘Don’t beg anybody for
anything, especially love.’‘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.’‘ The enemy is not men.
The enemy is the concept
of patriarchy .’‘I know the world is bruised
and bleeding, and though it
is important not to ignore
its pain, it is also critical
to refuse to succumb to its
malevolence.’‘We die. That may be the
meaning of life. But we do
language. That may be the
measure of our lives.’РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS