A Celebration of the Life of Toni Morrison - Full Program

good afternoon welcome to the Cathedral of sin John the Divine the episcopal cathedral in the city and Diocese of New York and this is a house of prayer for all people so all people are welcome here's my friend Michael Curry says sometimes all means all so whoever you are wherever you're from whatever you think of yourself or don't think or other people that you're welcome here you're in God's house your home you're safe you're loved and welcome to this living memorial in honor of the life and gifts and presence of Toni Morrison MS Morrison and her prodigious talent are part of the abundance with which God blesses the world we inhabit can't you just see the abundance in her life and work she used the fire of her abundant god-given gifts to touch millions of lives in so many ways and here we are as a small token of that she broadened our horizon and she elevated our sights to a higher vision she confronted prejudice with the power of truth speaking wisdom and thereby gave voice to those who had no voice she propelled us forward in our journey toward reconciliation and hope she refreshed our spirits and entertained our souls she enlivened our imagination and she gave us courage she showed she showed us in simple and strong ways what it means to be a human for all of these and more we the recipients of the beauty of her graceful presence can only be thankful as we gather today to remember her life to mourn her absence and to celebrate her continuing presence thanks be to God I now call on Daryl Macdonald good afternoon on behalf of Toni Morrison's family and penguin Random House I have the honor of welcoming and thanking you for coming out to represent as aware and in full force it appears and of course gratitude and respect galore to the speakers and musicians gracing this fent about a month or so ago the United the United States Senate in a rare show of bipartisanship approve the resolution honoring Toni Morrison's life and legacy put forth by sherrod Brown and Rob Portman Democrat and Republican respectively of Ohio where Tony was born the resolution pointedly includes Toni Morrison in the patriarchal American literary canon citing Hawthorne Melville Twain Emerson Whitman and Faulkner as her peers but Toni Morrison transcends this well intentioned if parochial commendation she is no mere great American writer a free artist of herself she is a world historical figure a towering presence in the world Republic of Letters who has had a seismic impact on the global economy of literary prestige so it is that we have gathered in this house at this time to offer a collective praise song in celebration of Toni Morrison's life a life evermore about to be as generations today and to come read her work let's all rejoice as we extol the richness of her personhood the sublimity of her art the exceptionalism of her stature and the power of her moral imagination to have the chance to remember Toni Morrison is a real gift so Thank You Errol and it's a deeply humbling one Toni Morrison's earliest work did not reach a wide audience not right away but it's fair to say that with time the world caught on you could stock a good-sized warehouse with all the prizes and certificates and honorary degrees and medals that came her way but she kept the very best of it in her guest bathroom two framed documents one near the sink and the other nearby the first was her Nobel Prize diploma as bestowed in 1993 by the Swedish Academy the second the second was a letter dated 1998 from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announcing that her novel paradise had been banned from the state's prisons paradise the Texas authorities declared quote contains materials that any reasonable person could construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve a breakdown of Prisons through inmate disruption such as strikes or riots think of it the idea that a novel could cause an uprising and as Toni once put it smiling how powerful is that powerful is one way to describe Toni Morrison her presence her talent her voice were and remain unforgettably powerful and as much as any artist of her time she shaped how we thought how we felt what we read what we teach how we see each other and how we see this troubled country it is as I say a very humbling thing to speak about her and her immense legacy it was some it was certainly a humbling thing to call her on editorial business I once rang Toni to see if she might write something for the magazine she seemed not to care very much about my editorial desperation I can't honey she said I'm baking a cake now how long it takes to bake a cake was not something I was prepared to ask her she knew the score Toni Morrison began her life in letters as an editor she did it to pay the bills but she also found a way to bring honor originality and political purpose to that job she respected protests but she did not March she edited and that was for a time her political work she published a revolutionary Almanac called the black book a kind of family scrapbook of 300 years of American black life and she brought to life anthologies of contemporary african-american and African literature work that had helped to shape her and that she wanted you to read she brought forward the work of Gail Jones Toni Cade Bambara Angela Davis and a gifted and original young poet named Muhammad Ali editing was a job but it was also her activism her community work and yet in those days Toni's most profound work was furtive it took place at home in the dark beginning at 4:00 or 5:00 6:00 in the morning while her young sons were fast asleep she knew precisely what she wanted to do she wanted to write about black people for black people in the language or the various languages of black people and this struck her is no more or less peculiar than Tolstoy who wrote in Russian about Russians for Russians and as a reader she noticed long before most academics how black people were barely visible in nearly all of the novels of the American Renaissance in Poe and in thought Hawthorne she was determined to assert the primacy the complexity the specificity the Payne the beauty and the endurance of african-americans and not have to go about explaining it all all the time to anyone else white readers were welcome of course just as French readers were welcomed to Tolstoy but as she told her good friend Hilton all's my sovereignty and authority as a racialized person had to be struck immediately and so in those stolen early morning hours she worked and reworked a manuscript about a young girl who was consumed with tragic self-hatred and her name is Pecola Breedlove I wanted to read a book about the most vulnerable person in society female child black and it wasn't around so I started writing it she said and the result of course was the bluest die then came Sula then came Song of Solomon and it was at that point that the artist no longer had to work an office job she was free Toni Morrison's novels are not only about subjects about race in its construction about family and community friendship and love about all that is human they are also exquisitely built they are like music they are as intricately structured as an Ellington Suite countless passages feature the crafted chaos and the intentional dissonance and dignity of a Thelonious Monk solo other passages are as purely melodic and as fearless as something by her favorite singer Nina Simone at a celebration of Nina Simone's life 15 years ago at Carnegie Hall Toni said if Simone what so many readers have come to say of Toni Morrison she saved our lives she led us to believe with little true-to-life evidence to support it that we could do it fight injustice rather than suffer it survive loss come to terms with betrayal be brutally honest disarmingly tender have regrets - apology and not just taste the fullness of life but drink it down Tony Morrison was also an invaluable thinker her capacity to see this country for what it is to see our best and worst political actors for who they are was uncanny just after Election Day in 2016 the editors of The New Yorker called on a number of writers and thinkers among others to make sense of the inexplicable it was not unexplicable to Tony Morrison this time thank goodness she was not baking a cake she emailed back regarding the future I am intellectually weaponized then she wrote this about the election of Donald Trump so scary are the consequences or of a collapse of white privilege that many that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength these people are not so much angry as terrified with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble as an editor as a thinker and then as a novelist Toni Morrison refused to allow racism to overcome her racism she said keeps you from doing your work it keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being somebody says you have no language and you spend 20 years proving that you do somebody says your head is in shape properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up somebody says that you have no kingdoms and you dredge that up none of it is necessary there will always be one more thing Toni Morrison struggled against the hate and she was fearless but she also refused to get lost to lose her sense of mission she carried through on the promise and the mission that she embarked on a half a century ago with the bluest I great novelists illuminate worlds we dimly know where they explore new realms of experience that had been sequestered from the Canon that is great novels either open a door or they turn on the lights Toni Morrison did it all she opened the door and she turned on the lights thank you [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] soon after my first encounter with Toni Morrison she became my editor I probably would not have written an autobiography if anyone other than Toni had approached me and for me today the real significance of that book is the arena it created for an instant friendship that lasted almost half a century I was her housemate for a while according to her she was also my handler when we traveled together on tour we were traveling companions both within and beyond the continental United States we jog together in Spring Valley we hiked in the Virgin Islands we explored Scandinavia together she was my big sister a friend who made me feel that without her friendship I could never have become who I imagined myself to be today so many of us feel that we have found ourselves through because of and in relation to Toni and her work I was in my late 20s when we met and although she was in her early forties she was not yet Toni Morrison the internationally acclaimed writer but she was on a mission to open the u.s. publishing industry to black writers and activists I wanted to give back something she later said to Hilton ELLs I wasn't marching I didn't go to anything I didn't join anything but I could make sure there was a published record of those who did March and did put themselves on the line Toni also understood much better than anyone else that deep radical change happens not so much because people March and put themselves on the line however important this kind of activism might be but rather because we collectively learn to imagine ourselves on different terms with the world we realize that we can change along with the conditions of our lives and that it is the task of writers and other artists to help produce these profound shifts this is why she wrote and this is why she published authors like Toni Cade from bara Gail Jones Henry Dumas who was shot to death by a New York transit police officer in 1968 nothing was serendipitous here I don't remember formalities when we first met one moment I had no idea who Toni Morrison was in the next moment it felt like we had been friends forever I learned so much from Toni the evocative element of perception and language the expansiveness of the political beyond traditional realms of power the importance of identifying and attempting to contest the white gaze the male gaze but what I value most among all of her many gifts is how she demonstrated a way of being in the world that allowed her simultaneously to inhabit multiple dimensions she was always here and there at the same time totally present with you but also at the same time creating new universes many years ago when her sons were quite young I was staying with them in Spring Valley Toni had already written The Bluest Eye and Sula she made hot breakfast every morning before heading to the city where she would drop off the boys at school and be in her office at Random House by 9:00 she always began her writing early in the morning but would jot down ideas throughout the day I remember one morning when she was cooking eggs I believe while the eggs were on the stove she reached for her yellow pad and pencil which were always nearby and John at something down and again and again I remember her doing this when we were driving when the traffic that would come to a halt for example at the George Washington Bridge she was writing Song of Solomon and all of this time she had been engaged with milkman and Hagar and pilot in the other characters she was obviously fully involved with them the book itself is the evidence but at the same time she was absolutely present for her young sons or while driving or in conversation she was never only partially paying attention she was always 100% engaged this is why I think her vision was so extraordinary she never drew stark lines separating fiction and the real and her fiction was often much more real than reality and especially the current political reality Toni last visited me and my partner in Oakland a few years ago and we talked repeatedly of her upcoming visit when we would in California go up to the country to see the night sky and especially the Milky Way she was inhabiting one of the characters in her next novel a boy who of the night sky and so I think of her now exploring the infinitude of our galaxy we are probably all reflecting on the fact that so many out in the world am warning Tony Morrison and are proclaiming that she is not gone because her extraordinary work feels the void fills the void that was created by her passing but we who knew her who know her and certainly treasure her world for us it is the greatest challenge to our collective imagination to envision a world without the glorious laughter of our dear dear Tony everyone knows what kind of writer Tony was everyone knows what kind of political influence Tony was everyone knows what kind of cultural earthquake Tony was but not everyone knows what kind of friend Tony was for more than 40 years Tony was at least two of my four closest friends friends of course are the only people in our lives that we actually choose family clearly another choice romance that's not a choice that's a tropism but friends friends are purely voluntary now one of my other closest friends was in fact here today is a music journalist and once when she was interviewing John Lennon she asked him for his definition of a friend a friend he said is someone who calls you to redo your bad reviews well we've all had friends like that had being the operative word I had a friend who used to call me to say I thought you might have missed this and I thought you'd rather hear from me but did you see that awful review you got in the Wilmington supermarket news many years ago I was on a book tour with a book that was doing very well until it got a truly terrible review in the New York Times Tony was in Paris I was in either Portland OR Seattle I know there's supposed to be some vast difference between these two but I can never remember what that is despite the thousand hour time difference Tony called me from Paris listen she said this doesn't mean a thing this has nothing to do with your book this is personal this guy just doesn't like you what don't take it seriously she said reviews aren't important books are important you have to learn to ignore these kind of reviews like I did don't you remember when this person said that about me don't you remember when that person said this about me no I said of course I did not so she then proceeded to quote word-for-word at least half a dozen of her bad reviews none of which as she said mattered at all and many of Tony's bad reviews were absolutely despicable they reaped of misogyny and racism so what kind of friend was Tony Tony was the kind of friend who called you to read you her bad reviews but as Tony got older she kind of lost her grip on her bad reviews and genuinely seemed to shrug them off this enraged me how can you talk to that guy I would say don't you remember what he wrote about you oh well she would reply it was a long time ago I don't really care but I really cared so I assigned myself the task of holding Tony's grudges for her she found this extremely entertaining but I was perfectly serious and I still am so please let's keep that in mind thank you [Applause] when is a voice being this intimate and versatile affectionate far-reaching self-aware and also severe and dismissive of fools there's a syringe of the manner of her voice she's always full of swerves from humor to anger to music we see all this in the narrator of jazz who holds that remarkable novel together I like the feeling of a told story Morrison says where you can hear a voice but you can't identify it it's a comfortable guiding voice alarmed by the same things that the reader is alarmed by and it doesn't show what's going to happen either to have the reader work with the author in the construction of the book is what's important so we are always participating when we read Toni Morrison during a quiet loud the narrator will remember and another damn thing when the middle of a flashback she will pause a gesture that is what makes me worry about him how he thinks first of his clothes and not the woman but then he scrapes them not from his Baltimore Souls before he enters the cabin with a dirt floor and I don't hate him much anymore it's those Baltimore Souls and the precision of much anymore and besides who else interrupts a flashback there's this constant switching of the formal and colloquial of perspective and vocabulary so our stories feel gathered from everywhere I mean where does this voice this lingo come from is it American Homeric there's a documentary on Charlie Parker which is a famous moment when he is asked what he thought set him apart from all the other saxophone player and his reply was simply the octave man just the octave do you have your audience in mind when you sit down to write Morrison was asked only me she replied I love this faith she has in her own craft this is her talking to students in Mississippi as I write I don't imagine a reader or listener ever I am the reader and listener myself and I think I'm an excellent reader I mean I already know what's going on I have to assume that I'm very critical very fastidious and not easily taken in reader who is smart enough to participate in the text a lot and she speaks often of loving the rewrite the best part of all the absolutely most delicious part I try to make it look like I've never touched it it has the scare in her with a gradually discovered story that makes us fully trust her it is how we are intimately altered by her books and why beloved would change everything I did get to meet an auteur Emerson now and then over the years and what I remember most is a great humor but I'm really an intimate of hers as a reader so I feel I'm speaking today as one of many writers some of them are here who grew up elsewhere in Pakistan or Nigeria Trinidad Bogota who loved the skill of her craft her moral voice she's much more than an American writer she is Universal sometimes we find our true ancestors in other countries and become enlarged because we know their essays their novels those paragraphs that become us or devastate us so that we no longer remain solitary in that distance I read chairs for the first time in June of 1992 dazzl by its choreography how she led us with ease from 1926 Harlem into the history of our characters how she constructed and then rebuilt the story until there was a fully lit diorama where we could witness the past while we remained in the intimacy of the present all done by that guiding voice of the narrator who in a way is the most interesting character in the book but here's the long range octave or what Martin might call the kick towards the end of jazz the narrator realizes that what is happening in the novel is not what she claimed would happened so confidently in the opening pages she discovers in fact that there is a much more much more complexity invented characters than she imagined I'd like to read this moment when Morrison in the voice of the narrator allows her to confess to this misinterpretation of those in the story I miss the people altogether says the narrator I thought I knew them now it's clear why they contradicted me at every turn they knew how little I could be counted on how poorly how shadowy my know-it-all self covered helplessness that when I invented stories about them and doing it seemed so fine I was completely in their hands so I missed it altogether I was sure one would kill the other I wanted for it so I could describe it I was so sure it would happen that the past was an abused record with no choice but to repeat itself and no power on earth could the arm that held the needle I was the predictable one confused in my solitude into arrogance it never occurred to me that they were thinking other thoughts feeling other feelings puttin their lives together in ways I never dreamed of it is this confession I think made with craft and voice that reveals the vast democracy of vision and humanity in xx Morrison herself good afternoon [Music] the Sun may be their enemy it's gone you didn't mean I come again the steerer [Music] on a hillside all the well done by opening oh they will game I'll be varying back [Music] my can I see the river why but I can't catch the oceans morning time early riser where would I be without your song though you'll be hurting me I'd rather you here then gone [Music] I'll be there in back thank God for these wheels that keep on rolling it makes less time for me to walk just to see how this road it keeps on turning turning turning I wanna thank God that she keeps on bringing me home Hey [Music] [Music] I'll be there and back him back I'll be there and back I'll be there and back I'll be there in I'll be there in bad looky [Music] [Applause] in the beginning we were stolen we were stolen from myriad lands lands verdant with green lands spread with sere Plains lands undulating desert we were stolen as we walked to our wells we were stolen from our Gardens we were stolen from our weaving we were stolen from our mothers breasts our father's hands our grandmother's lap we were stolen and forced here we were stolen from our freedom pared down to parts and taken our names vanished reduced to 1 prime hand 1 ladies made one cook one seamstress our ease of walking leashed our feet no longer free to lead us where we will chained to the work our will and agency stolen bound our tongues garbled our languages subverted our speech there were some things they could not steal they thought us not human so they tried to make us not human but we did not submit we resisted we learned new languages they stole our songs but still we sang new ones we sang even as we toiled we anchored them with our anger our sorrow our need to be free sometimes that singing felt like freedom they tried to steal our stories but we still told them even as we toiled we anchored them with our wit furtive joy defiant love sometimes telling those stories seemed a doorway to freedom even after the wars the proclamations that decreed chattel slavery was at an end there was still theft redlining lynching Jim Crow bleach in swimming pools bombed-out cities they still tried in account after account to reduce us to who and what they thought we were in book after book in film after film slander after slander a portly kerchief mammy an obsequious dancing devoted enslaved man a savage Freedman reeling from his broken chains attacking scarlett o'hara's carriage they tried to render us invisible even to ourselves but yet we sang we lifted our voices and elated to the sky we scribbled poetry devoured books Oracle's ascended we wandering children found them in our childhood the prophets who called to us their voices high in the desert of the self we wandered their words loud and carrying on the wind as they sang us to ourselves as they bought us back to ourselves as they sang of rivers of invisible men of people with the gift of flight but beneath the stories the defiant whisper the Oracles hummed this we are not slovenly we are not violent we are not animals we are not our trauma we are more more and more and more Toni Morrison regal and wreathed in smoke and flame found us in the desert of the self she profound far-seeing and bold she of the indomitable octave we wandering children heard Toni Morrison's voice and she saved us there was tenderness in her song each sentence and embrace evident and how she's saying of her characters as they argued and made love and killed and cared for children and fed strangers how it shone in her patience her presence in her attention something in that absolute narrative presence in her sure voice communicated this you are worthy to be seen you are worthy to be heard you are worthy to be sat with to be walked beside even in your quietest moments you are worthy of witness this was the melody beneath her words and we heard it we understood we wandering children looked blindly in the dry distance enveloped by her voice and we knew we knew it was possible to write with such careful love and we also knew it was possible to be loved that we every one of us were worthy of witness we knew that there was more than this desert that Morrison's story's her love her regard was an oasis he was life in defiance of all we'd lost to the thieves here we were here we are Toni Morrison wrote to us again and again exhorting us of our beauty making us grapple with our pain reaffirming our humanity her every word a caress her every sentence an embrace her every paragraph a cupping of her hands around our faces that said I know you I see you we are together she loved us when we prayed and sang and danced she loved us when we lied and sliced throats and disowned our children she loved us that our best and not broken she called us forth in her pages and made us experience and understand ourselves with kindness with deeper knowing of all we had survived all we had not all we had made all we had unmade all we had become all we could be how she knew us how she sang us to the world and now that she is gone how we weep for our beloved [Applause] it is an honor to be here celebrating our genius Toni Morrison in this August place this says you know is a sacred space not least of which because it is resonant with writing and writers who like Morrison wrote themselves free it is also as you know the space where James Baldwin's funeral was held in 1987 when Toni Morrison offered a eulogy for her friend addressed to you that day a group of unknown would-be writers from Boston pilgrimage here taking pictures and whatsmore taking stock of what it meant to be a block to be a black writer something that Baldwin and Morrison taught and afterwards that group of people founded the dark room collective a group I would later join of the wish to not have any other black writer leave us without having met or hosted or hailed them that desire for community and continuity at just one of the million lessons Toni Morrison taught it was her voice and not just our losses that sent us forward I was fortunate to get to know and meet Toni Morrison a number of times my first and person kept encounter with her was during my freshman year of college when I talked my way into an advanced seminar on her work what a privilege reading all her novels in the order that they were written it was a condensed approximation of the Wonder and wisdom that had greeted faithful readers over the years she freed something in me that year Morrison came to Cambridge Massachusetts to read from beloved then newly out with a standing room crowd and people sitting in the aisles of the giant Unitarian Church my friends and I literally sat at her feet arriving a few minutes late Morrison past's right over and in between us close so close that could almost touch the hem of her garment of course now and always we all sit at her feet a year or so later in 1991 I would get to meet Morrison more personally I went to the movies with her and Angela Davis who perhaps remembers and a good friend of mine who's Davis's niece Issa whenever I tell this story which I don't do much but sometimes do people always ask me what movie did y'all see they picture I think something profound and political as Morrison's writing the five heartbeats I answer I love that it was that film because up close Morrison was earthy and funny smoking afterward as we walked the streets of Oakland Oh a bookstore she said after a few blocks and dashed in to ask after something through the glass doors I could see the employees at the help desk looking quite helpless answering that they didn't have this or that title then staring at after her in wonder as she simply walked out and we ambled back to our cars it was like a visit from a myth but she had only read about the whole while I was still in college I had my hardcover copy of beloved and my blue messenger bag and I was aching to ask her to sign it I was too shy and didn't know how to broach this subject exactly because Morrison was so unpretentious and accepting I was afraid to break the spell after we parted ways and for the rest of the evening and four years after I felt I had missed my chance later over a decade later I would get that book signed she was generous but more than that over the years her own work had helped me to further accept my own black and ride early self to realize two of her many truths that quote the function the very serious function of racism is distraction and also that quote the function of freedom is to free someone else she gave us permission to work to wake early and stay up late writing rather than arguing whether we could or should write or exist at all Morrison gave us beautiful language as an assumption of selfhood but also as a mirror to look into I'm thankful that she gave me as a young writer that afternoon to sit in the welcome dark dreaming alongside her today in my role as the director of the Schomburg Center for research in black culture my day job imagined the luck is to caretake and champion black history and culture in a house that toni morrison helped to craft in our courtyard at Schaumburg just down the hill in Harlem is a bench in honor of Morrison part of the bench by the road project by the Toni Morrison society miss embodies her wish for a monument to slavery and to memory when she says there is not even a monument no bench by the road where you can think of slavery and that was one of the reasons she wrote beloved she said now that actual bench is a celebratory place to contemplate to set a spell as we say and maybe even to cast a spell what Morrison conjured up in her writing and in her being is magic of the daily and extraordinary enchantment of black life it is Morrison more than anyone who measures the trauma and triumph of the enslaved who creates in her work a living monument to our shared past and our far-off future one of words and wisdom of silence shattered and the unsayable name made legible she's a friend to our minds I want to end with a poem by Morrison once she wrote in her work titled five poems called I am NOT seaworthy it's a work of music and mystery of words that sing I am NOT seaworthy I am NOT seaworthy look how the fish mistake my hair for home I had a life like you I shouldn't be riding the sea I am not seaworthy let me be earthbound star fixed mixed with Sun and smacking air give me the smile the magic kiss to trick little boy death of my hand I am not seaworthy look how the fish mistake my hair for home thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Applause] hello again ms Morrison I've been seeing you everywhere since you surrender to the air and took your flight I see you in bleak skies that are as seductive as sunshine I see you and Daisy trees I see you and benches by the road I hear your voice in church hymns spirituals and in jazz tunes because you were as you wrote of J Dean and tar baby not only a woman but a sound all the music we have ever wanted to play as well as a world and a way of being in it I keep seeing you too and shiny beautiful hair pins weave through grey locks each time you gifted me one of those hair pins I felt as though you were sharing pieces of your infinite crown with me I still feel your presence and your sister writer friends who folded me in your embrace and in my own writers sisters including dear Jasmine though you carried a particular strand of genius and every single cell of your body you constantly reminded us that it is indeed not scarce this made it so much easier to tremble less in your presence because quiet as it's kept you have giggled when you laughed and you had a twinkle in your eye when you are in the presence of someone whose company you enjoyed you drank vodka on a cold day just the really good stuff and smoked cigarettes at the Louvre you were the literary giant that is Toni Morrison but you were also Chloe Wofford and you allowed me to see them both for which I will always be grateful your work my goodness the work is sublime and we do not just read it we experience it you gave us both lullabies and battle cries you turned pain into flesh and you brought spirits to life you urged us to be dangerously free you led this foreigner to a different type of home your work has carried me through adolescence in marriage through Parenthood in orphanhood I have recited and paraphrased your sentences to myself while cradling the tiny bodies of my newborn daughter's they get bigger older but grown what's that supposed to mean and the skeletal phases of my dying parents soft as cream I hoped that they would go softer scream and I came to think of you as you wrote in The Bluest Eye as somebody with hands who does not want me to die death is as natural as life you wrote and you sure did live in this world some of us called you mother to you Ford she was mama some of us called you grandmother grand some of us called you sister so are many in this room called you teacher editor mentor we called you our beloved others called you friend which is no casual title to you because friendship is a kind of religion in your work including friendships of the mind we still call you by those names but now we will also call you timeless timeless we now also call you ancestor standing here reminds me of that day in your home in Grandview back in early 2016 we had spent the morning revisiting for a document to recall the foreigners home the month you were in residence at the Louvre we talked about slavery racism immigration political art Hurricane Katrina and hip hop when it came time for me to leave it was snowing outside and you were sitting by the window at your kitchen table with the winter afternoon light dancing across your face I leaned down to kiss the top of your head which was covered with a beautiful black and white scarf in that moment I felt the sheer good fortune of already missing you long before you were gone my kiss on the top of your head created a spark that startled us both with a surge of static electricity from the rug beneath our feet goodbye miss Morris and I said goodbye you said then you added I'm going to rest now dying was okay you wrote because it was sleep and tar baby a doubter is told the world will always be there while you sleep it will be there this is true for you as well the world will be here they're certainly not as rich and that is full it will still be here while you rest and when you're done resting remember as another was told to your voice remember that they are waiting in the hills for you the hills where the daisy trees still grow they are waiting for you your mother and your daddy your beautiful son Slade your sister Lois Jimmy Baldwin maya angelou nina simone and so many others they are all waiting and the hills for you go there and choose them after your well-earned rest [Applause] there's been a lot of personal reflections on Toni Morrison and so a lot of opportunities for me to be jealous and everything I've heard preceding me but I don't think anything could make me more green with envy than a widget story of discussing hip hop with Toni Morrison I have to wonder what that was like was it a biggie jay-z or NAS conversation it is taking me some time to truly understand how much I owe to Toni Morrison what I know is that when I was young to share poetry and economy of her senses enthralled me that I grew older and the sentences deepened for me as I came to appreciate with that poetry an economy was doing how it gave voice to a pain that was at once a distant and close what I know is I've been rereading Toni Morrison since her passing and I'm amazed how only now at this late hour I have come to appreciate what everyone here must already appreciate that Toni Morrison was really funny darkly darkly humorous what I know is that Toni Morrison taught me the meaning of grown folks literature the kind that to paraphrase my sister jasmine is as merciless with its characters and is merciless with us as life itself but like a trenchant memory we are drawn back to that work and slowly we come to see the lesson that grown folks literature trying to bestow on us Toni Morrison has been bestowing lessons on me for my entire life to explain what I'm meaning by this I have to take you back to 1974 before I was born and into my father's small struggling bookstore on Pennsylvania Avenue in West Baltimore if you've gone in that store in 1974 you would have found copies of what my father considered to be one of the most magical books he'd ever encountered and that's because this book was all about him all about black people and the book was not so much a book as a work of visual art a pastiche of ancient maps Antebellum newspaper clippings handbills quilt work photographs song lyrics and poetry this Marvel was called the Black Book and my dad had never seen anything like it he wondered how it could be that the white folks in publishing had brought such a thing to be there was no author identified on the cover of the black book and thus in no way of knowing that this book of magic was not the work of white folks at all it was the work of Toni Morrison my dad's bookstore was not long for this world sadly but the black book was when he shut down the store in the late 70s he brought it home put it in his library where it sat waiting for his young son to discover the black book is the first work of Toni Morrison's I have encountered it was chaotic to me printing fonts would switch on the same page the imagery sometimes of Sambo's other times of black men burnt alive other times of the enslaved was haunting I did not like the black book but I was very much arrested by it and in an era before smartphones and Google I spent hours flipping through its pages imbibing lessons on aesthetics that only now like life itself like grown folks literature are being revealed to me I think that the principal lesson was this black is beautiful but it ain't always pretty indeed for black to be beautiful it must very often not be pretty that beauty must ache that beauty must sometimes repulse even as it enchants even as an enthralls even as it arrests so Tony Morrison was with me as a child and my parents library she was with me at Howard University when I walked in her flowing shadow and saw her in 1995 gives the annual Charter Day address she was with me as I saw it my own voice as a writer and she was with me when I published in my own work and she was not there to anoint me or even celebrate me she was there to challenge me to force me to remember my lineage to remember the standard that was set before me by all my literary ancestors including now the queen of them all Toni Morrison herself to not indulge in gallantry to not indulge and pretty and to remember that this is not a fairy tale this is grown folks literature thank you [Applause] good evening I must say that I never I've been speaking since I was three years old in churches I'm never nervous or intimidated but writers are rock stars to me so to have this entire row of rock stars I'm like shaking inside I feel so honored to be in your presence and thank you errol mcdonald for inviting me to be here today the first time i came face to face with toni morrison was in Maya Angelou's backyard for a gathering of some of the most illustrious black people you've ever heard of to celebrate Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize victory my head and my heart were swirling every time I looked at her I mean I couldn't even speak I had to catch my breath and I was seated across from her at dinner and there was a moment when I saw Miss Morrison just gesture to the waiter for some water and I almost tripped over myself trying to get up from the table to get it for her and Maya said sit down we have people here to do that you're a guest so I sat down I obeyed of course but it was not easy I tell you to sit still or to keep myself inside my body I felt like I was all of 7 years old because after all she was there and so many others that day Mari Evans sister Angela Davis was there Nikki Giovanni was there Rita Dove was there Toni Cade Bambara was there it was a writer's mecca and I was there sitting at the table taking it all in and as I look back that day remains one of the great thrills of my life you know I didn't really get to speak to Toni Morrison that day I was just too bedazzled but I had already previously called her up to ask about acquiring the film rights to beloved after I finished reading it I found her number called her and when I asked her is it true that sometimes people have to read over your work in order to understand it to get the full meaning and she bluntly replied that my dear is called reading I was embarrassed but that statement actually gave me the confidence years later when I formed the book club on The Oprah Show to choose her work I chose more of her books than any other author over the years Song of Solomon first sula The Bluest Eye and Paradise and if any one of our viewers ever complained that it was hard going or challenging reading Toni Morrison I simply said that my dear is called reading there was no distance between Toni Morrison and her words I loved her novels but lately I've been rereading her essays which underscore that she was also one of our most influential public intellectuals in one essay she said if writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning it is also a and reference and mystery and magic and this facts can exist without human intelligence but truth cannot she thought deeply about the role of the artist and concluded that writers are among the most sensitive most intellectually anarchic most representative most probing of all the artists she believed it was a writer's job to rip the veil off to bore down to the truth she took the Canon and she broke it open among her legacies the writers she paved the way for many of them here in this beautiful space tonight celebrating her Toni Morrison was her words she is her words for her words often were confrontational she spoke the unspoken she probed the unexplored she wrote of eliminating the white gaze of not wanting to speak for black people but wanting to speak to them to be among them to be among all people her words don't permit the reader to down them quickly and forget them we know that they refuse to be skimmed they will not be ignored they can gut you turn you upside down make you think you just don't get it but when you finally do when you finally do and you always will when you open yourself to what she is offering you experience as I have many times reading Toni Morrison a kind of emancipation a liberation and ascension to another level of understanding because by taking us down there amid the pain the shadows she urges us to keep going to keep feeling to keep trying to figure it all out with her words and her stories as guide and companion and she asks us to follow our own pain to reckon with it and at last to transcend it and while she's no longer on this earth her magnificent soul her boundless imagination her fierce passion her gallantry she told me once I've always known I was gallant who says that who even knows they are gallant well her gallantry remains always to help us navigate our way through I'd like to close the evening with an excerpt from Song of Solomon you know I have many favorite passages when it comes to Tony's body of work one that you just shared Kevin she's a friend in my mind from beloved I love that mama did you ever love us and the mother's response in Sula but this one from Song of Solomon Solomon never fails to inspire awe for me and for that and so much else I say thank you to this singular monumental gallant writer he had come out of nowhere as ignorant as a hamlet and broke as a convict with nothing nothing but free papers a Bible and a pretty black haired wife and in one year he leased ten acres the next 10 more 16 years later he had one of the best farms in Mantua County a farm that colored their lives like a paintbrush and spoke to them like a sermon you see you see the farm said to them see see what you can do you see never mind you can't tell one letter from another never mind you born a slave never mind you lose your name never mind your daddy dead never mind nothing here this here is what a man can do if he puts his mind to it and it's back in it stop sniffling it said stop picking round the edges of the world take advantage and if you can't take advantage take disadvantage we live here we live here on this planet in this nation in this county can't you see that can't you see we got a hole right here in this rock don't you see we got a home in this rock and if I got a home you got one too so grab it grab this land take this land hold this land my brothers ain't nobody crying in my home I want you to take this land make it my brothers shake it squeeze it turn it twist it beat it kick it kiss it whip it stop it dig it plow it seeded ribbit-ribbit buy it sell it own it build it multiply it and pass it on you hear me do you hear me pass it on thank you [Applause] ladies and gentlemen my uncle Andy took a little spill before this celebration started but he still wanted to honor miss Morrison so we just beg your patience and the beautiful energy that you have given us during this whole beautiful celebration ladies and gentlemen Andy Bay [Applause] [Music] you [Music] there's a single says that love is blind still wear oven toe seek and ye shall find so I'm going to seek a certain list I've heard [Music] having found her year I cannot forget [Music] to add here an issue to my monogram [Music] tell me [Music] tell me where is the Shepherd [Music] for this nose [Music] there's somebody I'm longing to see I hope that she turns out to be [Music] to watch [Music] lost the nude [Music] you [Music] Oh [Music] two words [Music] over me [Music] not [Music] some gasps together handsome but too hard I'll carry [Music] won't you tell please to put on some speed [Music] two words [Music] two words [Music] [Applause] thank you thank you for your presence in praise of Toni Morrison thank you for the glow of your passion Godspeed and good night please remain seated will the Morrison family and the speakers and musicians please join me in the back

Channel: Penguin Random House

Views: 25,669

Keywords: book, author, write, read, funeral, Toni Morrison, St. John the Devine, interview, death, The Bluest Eye, Beloved, The Right Reverend Clifton Daniel III, Erroll McDonald, David Remnick, David Murray, Angela Davis, Fran Lebowitz, Michael Ondaatje, Toshi Reagon, Jesmyn Ward, Kevin Young, Brandee Younger, Edwidge Danticat, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Oprah Winfrey, Andy Bey

Id: bkr0wRuPCAQ

Length: 98min 16sec (5896 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019