I didn’t think of it much at the time, but Toni Morrison is an example of why we educate our children and why we sent ours to college. It’s because they would tell me about books they read and would leave them here at the end of a semester. Then I would read them. I thank them for telling me about Toni Morrison.
This morning, it took me a while to compose myself and wipe away my tears when I heard the news that Toni Morrison left our world last night. I’m always taken aback by the way news of the death of authors hits me. Maybe because, as she said,
“We die. That may be the meaning of life.
But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
February 18 is Mike’s birthday and last year on his birthday, he and I took a chance to go see the portraits of Michelle and Barrack Obama at the National Portrait Gallery. They were wonderful. You know what else was wonderful? This portrait of Toni Morrison. I kept circling back to it and felt a bit immobilized with awe. It's just a painting, right? I didn’t even know it was there and all of a sudden, I was staring at her.
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| Toni Morrison by Robert McCurdy. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery. |
Maybe my reaction was just that I realized this was the closest I would ever be to her presence.
It’s really hard to explain all that she meant to so many people. If you’ve read her books, it’s likely that you have strong feelings about her too. My own feelings this morning reminded me of how I felt when Maya Angelou left. Somehow I feel like they both knew how much we all loved them and how important their contributions were to us and our lives. That's comforting.
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| http://honeylights.blogspot.com/2014/05/dear-maya-angelou.html?m=1 |
You can read much better words about Toni Morrison and her writing and teaching and speaking than any I can write or speak. Still I felt a need to share mine as well so I came here to my little blog. Here’s some links just in case you want to immerse yourself in some Toni Morrison. Then, of course, read or re-read her books! And if you don’t like to read, go see the new movie.
Rest in peaceful power, Toni Morrison
Your words will live forever.
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The movie https://www.tonimorrisonfilm.com
About the movie. https://theundefeated.com/features/new-documentary-toni-morrison-the-pieces-i-am-had-to-fight-off-the-haters-too/
Her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/
From Pulitzer Prize org. https://www.pulitzer.org/news/memoriam-toni-morrison-1931-2019
From the New York Public Library. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/02/15/where-start-toni-morrison
From the Diane Rehm show. https://dianerehm.org/?s=toni+morrison
From NPR’s Fresh Air. https://freshairarchive.org/guests/toni-morrison
From the New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/toni-morrison
New York Magazine. https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/remembering-toni-morrisons-great-unfinished-mission.html
