The Legend That Is Toni Morrison
What her life story reveals about her genius
Throughout four decades, Toni Morrison has been a griot who bears the weight of multiple black universes in her writing. Her work has exposed the narrow bindings of the literary canon and burst through its seams with her inimitable prose.
In comparison to my peers, I came to Toni Morrison rather late in life — at 22 years old. I had grown up in a household where the main source of literature was the Bible. Maybe a Terry McMillan novel here or there. Or an Omar Tyree novel that I snuck and read while getting my hair braided. But it wasn’t until I matriculated in an MFA program in Vermont that one of my advisors emphatically told me that I needed to read Toni Morrison. My artistic horizons haven’t been the same since I delved into The Bluest Eye. I, as a black woman, felt exposed and acknowledged without any fear that the ugliness and triumph of African-American experiences would be distorted. On the contrary, I felt relief. This is a sentiment that is shared by millions of other readers.
Morrison’s belief in the limitlessness of black life is why she is our greatest living American author. This is no debate. No one else has been able to capture the American experience and pull a whole group of individuals, whose labor was crucial to this country, into the public…
