Toni Morrison: 2011 National Book Festival

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC good morning again you just brought the Sun out so okay welcome to the 11th annual Library of Congress Nestle whoops Book Festival we want to open this celebration of books and reading the second decade of this great festival with a greeting from a very special couple who are the honorary chairs of the National Book Festival President Obama and the first lady and they've sent a greeting to you all there their letter to all of us reads as follows literacy is the foundation that makes all other learning possible and it remains essential to the daily lives of people across our country reading stirs creativity and imagination in us all sparking excitement contemplation growth and progress events like this National Book Festival inspire men women and children of every age to pick up a book and they help foster as well a love of literature and learning that can last a lifetime we thank all those involved for your dedication to promoting literacy and celebrating the extraordinary works of authors poets and illustrators signed Barack Obama and Michelle Obama we're grateful to them for their support of reading and literacy and for sending us this message and we begin with a very special accolade for the National Book Festival really this city of books that we have here on the mall for two days for the first time in our history and the accolade is from one of the world's most outstanding writers pride of America miss Toni Morrison she as one as you know the Nobel Prize for Literature and so many other major Awards nationwide and worldwide she followed her early love of literature into study of the humanities and a rich academic and writing career has been since 1989 at Princeton where she became first African American woman to hold an named chair at any of the Ivy League universities she's amazed us with one of the most unique and original voices in all literature anywhere the power and poetic richness of her prose has been evident ever since she published The Bluest Eye in 1990 I Soula Song of Solomon tar-baby beloved jazz paradise and most recent and most recently a mercy so today it is my distinct pleasure to open up our festival it seems kind of an anti-climax after all the awards she's won but it speaks her great generosity and sharing with us some of her thoughts and some of her experiences which are so rich and such a great credit to America so it's my distinct pleasure to name this great American Toni Morrison as the recipient of the National Book Festival creative achievement award of 2011 so here let ladies and gentlemen Michael dyrdek Pulitzer prize-winning books columnist for The Washington Post which is one of our great sponsors and benefactors of this event he's an author filled a surprise in his own right joins Toni Morrison that honor he will interview her as today's presentation so ladies and gentlemen Michael dirty as dr. Billington said my name is Michael Durda I'm a weekly book columnist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post has been a long-standing sponsor of the National Book Festival I think this is the 11th year the post is very much committed to literature literacy reading and my colleagues there are we're all very proud to be introducing writers today and to be part of the festival again this year miss Morrison asks that we have a conversation for about 20 or 25 minutes and then open the floor to questions so that's what we're going to do we're going to she says dish a bit about Lorraine books reading and all sorts of literary subjects where I want to begin by saying of course you've she's one of the few writers here that absolutely does need no introduction and so I will I'll say nothing more than what dr. Billington is already remind you what he said but I do recall when about 10 or 15 years ago going to a college bookstore and wandering around looking at the textbooks for the various classes and I realized that virtually every other course was teaching a novel by Toni Morrison one or the other you know and whether it was English or cultural studies or african-american studies or women's studies it was all Morrison all the time since this is the National Book Festival let's begin by talking about books in reading can you tell us a little about your childhood reading what's really into books as a child particularly like I read very early because my sister I used to draw with pebbles on the sidewalk in the days when pebbles really worked and I move the copy name see eighty D spell our names I hate you and then I do remember this is tangential to reading but I do remember seeing a word painted on the fence you know like a quarter of a way down the block huge word and this is black paint and so my sister and I decided to expand our vocabulary and so we looked at it and we copied the letters and we copy you know what does it matter with you stop bad you go get some water you get the broom you do this and sweep it up so that's how you began to read I didn't even know what the word man by the way she said it she never told us what it meant I didn't know what it meant that I was 12 but anyway it's made me know that words had power and the other thing of course was the respect and the honor and the delight the reverence really that people in my family had for reading because my mother's father was Abe not able to go to school he'd born as a slave a little boy but he went to school the story was one day in order to tell the teacher that he would not be back and taught himself to read with other members of the family and I do remember I say this all the time he was always bragging and they bragged about it that he had read the Bible five times so I thought yeah well that's like a badge of honor in our family so then you know I went to the local library and sat down on those tiny little stools and read the whole row of children's books and in those days they didn't have why a young adult no he went from that I don't know Moby Dick there was nothing in between but it was always a pleasure it was it was probably an escape but at the same time it was encouraged it was available did you have any favorite children's books when you were little I liked oh well two things one my favorite were them collections Affairs shows the yellow book of the entry length and the other was now this may not connected anyway it's a reading but in those days there were stories you know on the radio and we listened I would put my ears so close to the radio there they would have to snatch me away but the point is that you could invent you know you participated in the story because you if they said it was a stormy day you had to imagine the storm if they said it was whatever you know as a flower thing you invented these things in your mind and that was the kind of thing that I you know began to really enjoy when I began writing you know just making sure that the reader was in it you know was helping me listen to the shadow who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men you know the soaps were only 15 minutes 15 minutes of the guiding light minister you know in your in the biographical note to at least know your early novel so they think still to some of the reprints the first sentence for a long time said Toni Morrison was born in Lorain Ohio and I can assure you that that statement brought you at least one sale many many years ago I was in a bookstore and I was looking at books and there was this novel The Bluest I was the only book you'd written I had not not heard of it before and I happened to pick it up and I looked I said hey there's somebody from my hometown Lorain Ohio and so I bought the book and that started me on the you know fandom of Toni Morrison's what was it about Loraine that made you wanted to cert that in your biographical note I mean it seems like a almost a little trumpet call what what what did Loraine mean to you so Elyria know the reign of the three little towns on the river was the working Manx town the shipyards steel mills people from all over the world you know Italians and Polish people is Hungarians and Mexicans and black people from Canada some of them had escaped the Canada came back down over the lake and some from the south and I thought the whole world was like that you know that this everybody was there there were no black neighborhoods there were no you know separations the real separations were the thousands and thousands of churches city of churches but you know that was a comfortable place for me and the teachers and now that I think about it didn't realize it the teachers were very very the elementary school till very recently I would go back to Lorraine and I would occasionally meet very elderly ladies who would remember you in their class yes yes though my first-grade teacher Esther hunt is 101 years old and I went back to Lorraine to do something and I thought she'd be there and she wasn't there because she was on an airplane going to see her somebody get married or something I wrote a little letter but she was interesting because she said to me she wrote me a note a letter and she said you know we went to Normal School where ladies went they didn't get married they went to Normal School two years they came out they taught school and they thought it was you know my Latin teacher in high school thought that Latin was the most important thing in the world and she was so passionate she loved it so much she didn't even look at us she looked like she was always reciting looking up as Arawa and I was just enchanted with her fascinate it sounds really good at it and I wanted to be complimented by this woman who loved that stuff so much and all of the teachers seem to me to be like that so it was you know they keep fussing about teachers these days I don't know what it is but I do remember that people that didn't go to school of Education that didn't just committed themselves and they were you know fairly certain but their passion for what they taught was what was interesting I fell in love with Latin just based on I know that you when you were at Cornell you minored in classics English classics Oberlin College is in Lorain County it's just 10 or 12 miles down route 58 from Lorraine and there would have seemed to me the ideal place for you to go to school it's long tradition of civil rights activism many women and african-americans together and it's a place for artists and activists and it certainly defines much of your own career but instead you went to Howard why did you not why did you want to go to Howard say rather than Oberlin or somewhere else well the reason I didn't want to go to Oberlin is precisely what you said was right down the road I went to Oberlin but I made my parents promise never the position never they come visit so you wanted to get out of Ohio he was the only other person who had gone to college and he had been to Ohio University so he was trying to persuade me to go to Ohio University but I really wanted to be in the company of black intellectuals and that was not available to me I just wanted to know as great as those teachers were you know by the time I you know was 16 or 17 I just wanted to be in that company you know with and Howard was the so-called Harvard and I and it was true because when I graduated in 49 and in 49 50 53 graduated in 53 that's precisely what it was all these really powerful and brilliant faculty there and then after I went to graduate school that some other stuff came back it had changed a lot I mean it was the beginning of the 60s or 70s or whatever you know it was a lot of unrest what did you think of Washington since we're here in Washington we would you know you know I think from a small steel town in Ohio and suddenly here in the nation's capital what was your reaction culture shock I had never been in or legally segregated where the law was a B and C where they had those little things on the buses colored you know you moved it back as the white people got on the bus you moved the signs back till you got out the door I guess but it said colored only or something and I'd stole but the other thing was I didn't I had not been accustomed to that there have been other kinds of restrictions racial restrictions in Lorraine but they were sort of mild and you know we had the means to make sure it wasn't effective every time a Theatre opened up in Lorraine Dreamland theatre the first day my mother goes and sits at the opposite end of wherever the ushers taking her go they just sit over there just to make sure that they're not corralling all the black kids in one section when eyes open though hopefully go in there the first day and sit down and order something as a kind of inquiry so and nobody bothered if I mean it was not a thing but the point was here was different this was not you know that sort of cultural thing this was serious business but I didn't feel its sting and when I was 17 I thought it was all very funny that there was one department store but I didn't feel it sting because the university the campus the neighborhood was so invigorating comfortable and it was a very bourgeois City at that time you know unlike perhaps now where everybody was he's working for the government or they're working and domestic but they all made money and it was not a factory time you know they all felt as though they had some social space and they were very proud of that that changed over time but at that time I felt very comfortable here in spite of but maybe because of the fact that it was a segregated you you majored in English and what Cornell graduate school and ultimately became a college teacher and have been returned to college teaching and you're you know after your success as a writer what is drawing you to teaching what why I mean certainly you're one of the world's most famous and honored writers why did you continue to teach for so long what what what did it satisfy in you I really like teaching it's one of the few one of the ways in which you keep learning as a teacher you constantly learning it's not that your students are all that smart did you teach writing or literature I taught literature I only taught writing when I got to Princeton and then I don't need taught that I started out teaching African American literature but I really liked teaching because in order to make it clear in order to make them want to do it in order to make them understand how important it was I had to you know get my own lectures together my own plans together have to keep figuring out ways in which you know to make that whole enterprise an important thing I still like it the only reason I don't do it is that I mean I'm Princeton every actually I just retire at 65 and they could say no no no wait five more years 70 and then 75 so I'm 80 right at Princeton you said that you talk mostly writing did you ever teach any of your own books no I would have thought you'd have been able to bring kind of insight into how the book was structure what you were thinking about as you wrote it or did you feel that you'd better not no I think students I taught other boats but they don't want what I know about that book is of no relevance to them for example I know that this exists in this form because I was very busy constructing a palette and that Song of Solomon opens with red roses white and B and that's important to me as a writer to me to prepare this and should care less but those are the ways in which I am trying to you know go underground I think I called it something I thought was original with me but wasn't invisible ink you know where you begin to write in fiction and poetry justice as well we go underneath the language and underneath even the feelings to some other place that a sensitive reader can get doesn't have to articulate it doesn't even have to know it but it's a kind of a connection there so those are the things that interested about my own books in addition to the obvious and but it's not investigative when I teach a text I want the students to quarrel with it and to interrogate it and to say this is wrong or they miss this I can't do that with my own books I mean I guess I could you know they should say no you kind of went off a little bit here and this doesn't ring true and the reason is this so it defeats the whole purpose of being a critical reader if I'm teaching my own books because I will say no making any changes in your books Henry James for example you know revised his books you say oh I could have done this a little bit better oh yeah every time I read them to audiences Oh finally after four years I got the right word and I didn't have it for a long time you left teaching to go into editing what drew you to editing of publishing I didn't have a job and so so many advertise we saw we saw classified in the paper you know one you ever hear books needed editor Random House little baby came home live with my mother there was a kind of a job opening overland Oh sort of ish but I think they sort of had somebody in mind anyway in the mail paying something I had subscribed to when I was in Washington he was called the New York Review of Books just come out I got the first well the first days during that strike right so I go back to Lorain Ohio and all of a sudden two copies of that same issue find me in Lorain Ohio you must have been the only person in Ohio with the subscription and they track he's like that I said what is this I got another copy of the same and it wasn't for somebody who had a graduate degree and they wanted every textbook publishing house and I said oh gee this sounds like me and then I put it aside and then with two more coffee escape answered the ad they call me up they came and it was a textbook job in Syracuse Algar be a singer and they were doing High School literature anthologies and they were moving to New York immediately so if I was not prepared to live in New York their suggestion was that I'd not take the job so I was prepared so I lived there for about a year and then we all went to New York and then stuff and stuff that's how I got started in editing and to edit for me is almost like well no it is like you know term papers big fat ones and maybe 500 it's just that relationship where you think you know the talents and the strengths of a student and you try to bring those out that's precisely what editing was for me he's not competitive I was writing at the time but I knew what that particular writer wanted to say and how what their style was so I would just encourage that identify it when it was not right so it was a similar these occupations are not all that dissimilar for me you know in the way that I feel about reading and writing and other people's work you know it's very much it's not the same but it's in the same sort of category of analysis we actually first spoke on the phone when I asked you as a young editor at The Washington Post book world to review a biography of Zora Neale Hurston and what you did you did and we ran it on the front page and I know that that person is one of your literary it was 30 years ago now you were still in an editor at Random House yeah there wasn't it wasn't Robin him I don't think so it was a woman yeah it was a woman but what I've been asked is you pointed to a person is one of your models in Spa inspiration and I know that well you were at Cornell you wrote a thesis on Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner and so I presume all of these people are meaningful important writers to you in what way what did they what did they mean to you as a young writer is an older writer there were very different writers writer types but you know I had to wander around you know new criticism you have to figure out something to make your thesis with but they had both had an attitude very powerful attitude about suicide and she thought it was a form of liberation Woolf Virginia Woolf you know for her it was grabbing hold of one's own life and throwing it away if you felt like it for Faulkner with Clinton it was like oh my god you know he failed life is awful he's guilty he's carrying this therefore suicide was unmasculine and week not a strength it was a weakness so I was interested in the theme more than you know from the British point of view of this single solitary elitist educated woman to this guy in Mississippi who was extremely prolific and had a kind of natural understanding that I had never seen before in literature I don't mean he was you know the father of it but he had an intense and tore - I'm coming flicked at attitude about non-white people he wrote about Native Americans remember Indian Joe and he wrote about black people whether they were good people or bad people in a way that was not predetermined and I had never read anything quite like that before except you know maybe movie date you know with those people but that was interesting to me because it sure there were no shortcomings he was not like Hemingway who was always dumping on black people he never gave him a name they were always in Africa carrying his whatever he shot and on barriers you know or they were saving his life and he would just call him odd things you know my famous sentence from Hemingway is to Cubans walk down with no two men came toward me one was a Cuban the other was a black now suppose the broth was the Cuban wine you just say to Cubans came down let's go he was always making his girl so Falk there made distinctions but it was just different and the last time I saw anything like that was like Carson McCullers people who could write out were you fat were you interested in southern literature was an important their wealthy would you would you think do you think Faulkner would is the great American novelist of at least the first half of the 20th century yeah it's the best thing ever better than everyone and I met him he was terrible what was the occasion well I was not meeting him I just passed by and he had this picture of himself in riding crops so the point being I think there's a big difference between the this in the book human being they're mostly not nice well you know in the course of your career certainly in the last you know 40 years or so you have a chance to meet all sorts of interesting people who have you been most thrilled to meet if like obviously Falk there wasn't a great thrill but who have you really when you look back to God Here I am Toni Morrison for Warren Ohio meeting this person the two people who are most interesting to me one because she was just interesting and smart and brave was Angela Davis and that relationship was amazing to me you know I suspect there are a lot of people here might know who Angela Davis is are you kidding Angela Davis Andrew Davis you know when I first met him we were doing his book and all the salesman was sitting around I'm the editor right but I'm a woman and all these guys that I know are the big shots in the company head of this head of that and then looking at hourly and they're going oh my God look at his hands they're acting like they work there they were like fans so he you know did what he wanted to do if I asked him a question he would look at the guys okay problems the guys are ineffectual they're doting on him he's not doing anything and I am a woman you know like yeah who pays any attention particularly in the religion you know that he has as well as life in general I'm thinking I have got to stop this then I remember reading something about him some woman uptown was about to be put out of her apartment and he read about it and he gave her some money he sent her some money to pay her rent and the woman was like 70 or 80 years old and it was sad story and I thought you know what he deeply deeply respects older women women outside the you know the thing so I would go in there and do like this you know get up from there you have an appointment I don't want to hear that no no you go and he did everything I said as soon as I took myself out of that other area familiar and began to act like his mother tap my foot it was wonderful it was wonderful he told me that he I said really you know I can have four wives nobody was stopped a crowd having a big hotel and he's supposed to go somewhere on tour you know big big crowd anybody he he says I don't want to go and I said why he said it costs too much and I said nobody's charge would Evy we're paying we just take you there you sign the books he said but everybody asked me for money and I said we don't have to give it to him he said are you crazy he said I'm the champ people come up and hit you on the arm and say hey champ give me five dollars so much was so much money I kept insisting you don't laugh so a woman was coming across the lobby and he said tell her she can't have an autograph so I realized that there were these enormous costs to his celebrity and and some problems you know we had scheduled him this is interesting we had scheduled him for signings book signings in these huge department stores in New Jersey New York but this all of a sudden they backed off they wouldn't let him in and I couldn't understand that they were so desperate because you can sell a thousand books if I'm Ally shows up but apparently Wilt Chamberlain had had an autograph being party at a certain department store but they had it at three o'clock in the afternoon and all the children came all the high school kids came and tore the place up so they thought oh no no we don't want to repeat this so I was having trouble trying to place him and finally I got there was a store called eight Korean vets big big department store and they agreed to have it at night when the store was closed they're very fearful that a whole bunch of black people was coming there steal everything and you know so I called the temple uptown one of the Imam up there and I told him the story I said we havin some trouble those white people found they want to call the cops and they want to do this I said I can't have that and he said don't worry nobody will viv overall so he comes with several black Muslim families with their children and a little bow ties and their little white dresses they go in and out of the line that is the perfect quiet orderly signing I have ever seen in my life and they sold twenty five hundred bucks that night it was interesting the changes you know that you get familiar with when you're working with somebody like that question for me and then we'll open for a few minutes to the audience but they asked what projects you have underway do you have any projects underway at the moment I do indeed I have a project one I think is unusual you invited I wrote a play with Peter Sellers that is I went to play he directed it it's called Desdemona it's all about her it's played in and it's coming to Lincoln Center that was a really really interesting project but the other thing I did do after a long period of not doing anything just incapable of going any further is I finished the novel you finished not a long time with it they're going to publish it I think it may and the title is home eight okay thank you miss Morris and now we're going to open for a few minutes of questions and I gather there are microphones where people can ask the questions is that correct you're on the side let me also say that Miss Morrison will be signing books I think 11:30 one of the other pavilions later today now come closer I can't hear you and there was a time that I saw you when your home had just burned down and I you were really feeling very out about that you had a statement that you made and I can't remember exactly how it was phrased but it was something like knowing what it felt to be home less I am wondering if the book that you wrote home has anything to do with that experience in that feeling maybe I don't recognize it as connected I was so angry at my house how could you and I thought well if that's the way you're gonna behave but indeed I changed my mind over time but it was absolutely I couldn't talk to anyone who had not had their home burned down for a long time I only talked to the Maxine Hong Kingston and people like you and I had students whose houses had burned down such questions I'll be short when my daughter who teaches language arts at a charter school in Pittsburgh and she is so excited to see you that she can't even ask you questions I was back here trying to give her questions to ask the first one is she would like to know how she can impart to the suit that she teaches predominantly african-american the significance of black writers and the second is how to get them to actually read because they are so resistant to reading and especially difficult texts like yours she tries to explain to them the difference between quality text and text is not quality well in two seconds I don't really agree with people say my books are difficult I don't have big words I don't have strange words every word I write is some word you've heard before now it may be in a different sequence or I may use them differently or I may leave spaces where you are accustomed to them and people don't surrender to the text they fight it or they think oh I got a really know something I'll just go in it and one of the ways to get students I think we're great you're in the yeah well make them write something cover 12 pages then they will appreciate what that means and then they'll know what reading is reading and writing about that far apart but I would try that anyway force them and tell them don't write about something you know but she kills her yeah the beloved story was emanated from a question I was having about feminism the question of modern feminism at that time identified freedom as freedom from having children so you can have birth control pills and abortion was legal and they regarded that as a form of female liberation and I was thinking that during slavery to own your child was the form of freedom just the opposite of what the current thing but it came from a story about a woman named Margaret Garner who indeed ran away from a plantation in Kentucky and they caught her and she had three children and she cut the throat of one and had a shovel that she was going to kill the rest and then herself because she thought it was it was awful the other thing one remembers is that there was an afterlife she's an African woman and so that you don't die and end it you die and you go someplace with your ancestors with other people in your family so it was violent but you she wanted to take them with her to this other place that takes a little bit out of the sting of infanticide but there was a lot of infanticide on the part of enslaved women in time physically on ships you know when they were raped and then three months four months to get here and then they would throw the infant's overboard because they had been conceived by the crew members you know and so on there was a lot of that but I thought it was the perfect dilemma because the mother-in-law actually said in the newspaper article I don't know whether to praise her or condemn her and I thought well the only person who can answer that question would be the daughter who got killed so I'll let her tell her mama we I'm sorry we have to over time as it is I want to thank Toni Morrison for coming to Washington this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

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Id: k4U2MzXjvZw

Length: 49min 8sec (2948 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2011