The Guardian - 07.08.2019

Section:GDN 12 PaGe:9 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 19:05 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

• The Guardian
  Wednesday 7 August 2019 9

PHOTOGRAPH: EAMONN MCCABE/THE GUARDIAN

most to me because it was my

introduction to her work and, in

many ways, it was like a literary

awakening for me. I remember the

cover art, and I had such a visceral

response that it still stays with me.

At the time, she wasn’t really

a public fi gure – she hadn’t ridden

to prominence. You have to

understand that many of us were

engaged with her work before she

became a public fi gure. Books such

as Sula and The Bluest Eye were very

much part of the black discourse but

were also widely embraced by the

white mainstream. Her middle

novels, such as Song of Solomon and

Beloved, are the ones that she is most

recognised for, but my love for Toni

Morrison started long before those

books were written.

Candice Carty-Williams

Novelist

A friend called me to let me know

that Morrison had died. It feels as if

I have lost a relative. I have always

loved her work; one of the last books

I worked on before I left my job in

publishing was Mouth Full of Blood:

Essays, Speeches, Meditations. I just

assumed she would be here for ever.

If it wasn’t for Morrison, I wouldn’t

be a writer. If it wasn’t for her work,

I don’t think I would be here. We owe

so much to her as a people, as black

women. She paved the way for so

many of us, naturally inspiring us to

do what we need to do without any

force or showiness. There’s her

quote: “If you don’t see yourself in

a book, write it.” That’s what I did

with my novel Queenie. If it wasn’t

female writers ; anyone with sense

can only be inspired by her.

Elif Shafak

Author

Recently, at an event at Daunt Book s

in London, a young mother from

Sudan put her hand up and said she

wanted to keep writing fi ction but

she found it hard to do so while

raising three young kids. I said to

her: “Think about Toni Morrison.

Remember what she said. Some days

we won’t be able to write, and that’s

all right. Other days we will be more

productive. Sometimes we will work

at night, sometimes during the day.

We will carve out little pockets of

spaces for ourselves, just like many

women do. It is only privileged

authors of a certain background who

are proud of their precise schedules.

The rest of us will keep struggling,

sometimes failing, sometimes

succeeding. It was Morrison who

showed us that this is how we write.”

Morrison’s work bore echoes of

her life, but she insisted on the

need for literature to be free, not

necessarily autobiographical.

Although her work was multilayered,

and her themes diverse, she always

wrote about love – its powerful

presence or painful absence.

Bonnie Greer

Playwright, novelist and critic

Toni Morrison was a quintessential,

unabashedly American writer. Like

her fellow giant, Walt Whitman, her

work was, above all, audacious. She

seized the landscape with a fl ourish

and wove it, unwove it and put it

back together. Done with spirit and

The Spirit.

What it was.

What it is.

In this, and at the same time, she

invented and reinvented the music

of her people. She took for granted

that we knew what she was doing,

and put that music before us. With

a blessing.

Like her equal, Whitman, she

cannot be imitated.

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

Writer

How can you do justice to a writer

who saw your soul and wrote it too?

I fi rst read Beloved in high school and

it was the fi rst time I felt allowed to

access the pain of my ancestors, the

fi rst time I felt like that deep welt

inside of me had reason to be there

and the fi rst time I felt soothed by

representation. I was captivated by the

magic of Sethe’s story, her haunting,

her ability to sink into her pain, the

chokecherry tree of scars that criss

crossed her back. I hadn’t read

anything else up to then that allowed

me to understand what it means to

be able to trace your lineage back to

slavery. Morrison’s characters and

her distinct voice will be with me for

life. On days where it feels like there

is nothing to do but listen and learn,

I sit in bed with earphones clamped

on tight, listening to her voice

narrate the stories of a past I feel

intimately connected to. I am so

grateful and so sad. I often thought

about the possibility of meeting her,

but then realised that I wouldn’t

have anything interesting to say

to someone of her greatness.

for her words, would I have thought

I could do it? Would I have felt

equipped to do it? Probably not.

Four years ago, I came across a

photograph of her at a disco party.

She looks incredible: afro out, in a

slip dress, braless – the constraints

are not there. I sent it to loads of my

friends and I was like, “I can’t

imagine what this feels like , to look

like that.” It’s just the most amazing

thing – it’s like she has seen

someone across the room, and she

is free and happy. There’s a “carefree

task. But from where I am now I can

see that she was saying: “You’re not

allowed to miss this. You need to see

what Morrison has written for you.”

Morrison is, to me, the best writer

the English-speaking world has ever

seen. The best novelist, one of the

best essayists, one hell of an editor,

and sometimes one of our greatest

poets in the midst of her prose. By

the time I came into the world,

there was no question that this black

woman from Ohio, writing about

black people in the midwest, was

one of the greats.

What does that do to a young

black writer? To a generation of black

writers and writers of colour? By

Morrison’s example, we knew we

could write ourselves and our people

with love, rigour, and intention. We

knew that to be asked to bend our

writing towards the comfort of

some imagined white reader was

a distraction from the good and

necessary work of achieving and

dreaming up our people. We knew

that the best writers don’t just clear

space for their own name, but make

their abundance the wealth of many.

Morrison did the thing. She lived a

mighty life. She was loved and asked

us to love harder. She wrote and

we’ll be trying to catch up to her for

ever. Morrison is the foundation.

I’m wrecked to see her go, but as

I sit here I can’t help but smile

thinking about all she did, all she

enabled, all she built, all she dreamed,

all those she invited into the room

of letters. Rest, Toni. You did

magnifi cent. You took this language

they beat into our people and made

us a feast. Thank you for making us

better. Thank you for it all.

Caryl Philips

Author and playwright

Morrison almost single-handedly

took American fi ction forward in the

second half of the 20th century, to a

place where it could fi nally embrace

the subtleties and contradictions of

the great stain of race which has

blighted the republic since its

inception. She broke ground, not

only as a writer of great fi ction and

nonfi ction, but as one of the most

infl uential editors of her time – a

pioneer, being both black and female.

But more than this, an inspiration

with her unswerving support for

books and the authors in whom she

believed. She fought tenaciously,

as a writer and as an editor.

Lynn Nottage

Playwright

On a personal level, Morrison was

immensely important to me. As a

young girl, as a reader looking for

representations of self, she was one of

the fi rst novelists who I felt captured

the experience of being black in a

way that resonated for me. I came of

age in the 70s and, prior to Toni

Morrison, there wasn’t an abundance

of work written by black women that

truthfully told our stories.

The fi rst book I read of hers was

Sula and I think that what I responded

to in that book in particular was that

the central character was young and

irreverent, an unconventional,

defi ant black girl who felt very

dangerous and familiar. Sula is

the  Morrison book that means the

Her work doesn’t

just aff ect black

writers; anyone

with sense

can only be

inspired by her

Kimberly Elise,

Oprah Winfrey

and Thandie

Newton in the

1998 fi lm version

of Beloved

black girl” movement that I have never

felt able to fi t into, because I have a

lot of cares, a lot of worries – I’ve

always looked at this photo whenever

I’ve needed to remind myself that I

can be carefree. It was my computer

desktop background when I was

struggling in my job, struggling to

get my words out, struggling with

my identity. When I was feeling that

I couldn’t be more trapped, that was

the picture that kept me going, and

when I saw the news, that’s what

came up in my mind. I’m just so

grateful to Toni Morrison for that.

Alice Walker

Novelist

We have lost a great writer whose

extraordinary novels leave an indelible

imprint on the consciousness of all

who read them. What a force her

thoughts have been and how grateful

we must be that they were off ered to

us in this extremely challenging age.

Candace Allen

Author

Morrison is always the ideal when

it comes to writing. I had just found

the possibility of a topic for my third

novel when I saw the news of her

death on Twitter. It completely

fl oored me, but I quickly got the best

rum in the house, went out into the

garden and poured a libation in

thanks for all she has done. For me,

the message from Toni to take

away, even though the words are

Beckett’s, is to fail better. We only

have our language with which to

tell our stories.

At university, I remember reading

The Bluest Eye and being devastated.

I then went on to Sula and Beloved

and Jazz – all of them depict black

women so powerfully. At that time,

I wasn’t aspiring to be a writer, but

she was telling me how to be a writer,

how to be alive and how to give it

profundity. Her legacy is human; the

huge breadth of humanity is what

she expressed – and in places people

wouldn’t perhaps notice it – and it’s

profound. It doesn’t just aff ect black

Morrison with

her sons in 1978;

Barack Obama

honours her with

the Presidential

Medal of

Freedom in 2012

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