This article was published in The Egyptian Gazette on August 22nd, 2019
Nobel
Prize-winning author Toni Morrison died Monday fifth of August in New York. The
literary titan, who became the first African American woman to win the Nobel
Prize for Literature, was 88.
The Morrison family released a statement through
Morrison’s publisher, Knoph and Random House: “It is with profound sadness we
share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni
Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and
friends. She was an extremely devoted
mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends.
The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students
or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous
loss, we are grateful she had a long, well-lived life.”
Robert Gottlieb, her longtime editor at Knopf, added:
“She was a great woman and a great writer, and I don’t know which I will miss
more.”
When she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993,
it was because she “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic
import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” Every one of
her works revels in blackness in a different way as it exists in the American
society in the past and the present.
Celebrated and embraced by countless people all over
the world, Morrison’s works tackled the hidden details about life for African
Americans. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970 and kick
started her career of masterpieces, which spanned over four decades, including
titles like Beloved, Song of Solomon, and Sula. She was
also ahead of her time in figuring out how to maintain a work-life balance. My personal all time Morrison favorite is her
Paradise in which she introduces feverish attempts by her black females to
start an earthly paradise. She draws extensively on magic realism to explore
the possibility of such a paradise on earth.
Morrison was the first female African-American editor
at Random House. She held teaching positions at Howard University, Yale
University, Bard College, Rutgers University, SUNY Albany, and Princeton
University. Morrison published 11 works of fiction in her career, most recently
“God Help the Child” in 2015, and was admired by many including celebrities
like Marlon Brando and Oprah Winfrey.
In 2012, President Barack Obama presented Morrison
with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the
United States.
In her Nobel Prize-winning speech in 1993, Morrison
foreshadowed how we remember her today: “We die. That may be the meaning of
life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Memorable – and powerful – quotes
from Morrison’s works and interviews.
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the sh-t that
weighs you down.”
– Song of Solomon, 1977
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of
that freed self was another.”
– Beloved, 1977
“Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”
– Beloved, 1977
”At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes
enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.
No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or
tell it to. When that happens -that letting go – you let go because you can.”
– Tar Baby, 1981
“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you
have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that
if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then
your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.'”
– From the November 2003 issue of O, The
Oprah Magazine
“You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you
don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was
absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who
falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he.
You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it
means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why
should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value
yourself.”
– Songs of Solomon, 1977
“Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything
done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting
feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of
control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers …
and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.”
– From an interview with CBS in 1987
“Love is never any better than the lover.”
– The Bluest Eye, 1970
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do
language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
– From Morrison’s Nobel lecture, 1993
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it
hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”
– From her Ohio Arts Council Speech, 1981
- “I've traveled. All over. I've never
seen anything like you. How could anything be put together like you? Do you
know how beautiful you are? Have you looked at yourself?'
'I'm looking now.” ― Toni Morrison, Paradise
― Toni Morrison, Paradise
“There is honey in this land sweeter than any I know
of, and I have cut cane in places where the dirt itself tasted like sugar, so
that's saying a heap.”
To me, Morrison did not die; she just made the shift,
the move from an earthly paradise she had attempted to a heavenly one that is
sure to include her.
