Toni Morrison Discusses 'A Mercy'

Tony Morrison thanks so much for joining me here today at the New York Public Library we're going to be talking about your book a mercy your new book it's a fascinating look at America in its earliest days when it was still the new world you returned to the subject of slavery but in a very different way and in a very different era we're talking about as I said the new world this is really the early times in America why did you choose to go to that era to tell this story I wanted to separate race from slavery to see what it was like but it might have been like to be a slave but at not without being raced because I couldn't believe that that was the natural state of people who were a born and people who came here that it had to be constructed planted institutionalized and legalized so I moved as far back as I was able when what we now call America was fluid ad hoc a place where countries from all over the world were grabbing at land and resources and all sorts of people were coming here and you have this tapestry of characters and each of these characters seems to sort of represent a different aspect of life in America that time and a different kind of servitude and unpaid labor oh yes one realizes that there was no civilization that did not rest on some form of enslavement whether it was Athens or Moscow whether it was England or France they called him different names peon serves what-have-you but owning the labor of people was a constant in the world so that was not the unusual thing the unusual thing was coupling it with racism which came much much later so for me it was the ideal place to see how all this began let me ask you about Jacob work that character at the beginning of the book when you first introduced him and during that journey that he takes at a certain point you you mentioned what the atmosphere is like in the country at that time and you talk about a People's War and the result of that People's War is that laws were created which separated white people forever I think you put it from everybody else and I don't know anything about that I telling what Sinjin well I had always heard about it's called Bacon's Rebellion and it was a group of men led by a landed gentry person aristocrat who gathered together white indentured servants black slaves other landed gentry about four or five hundred of them and over in order to overthrow the governor in Virginia all sorts of reasons they also rampage through the Carolinas killing Native Americans as well but at any rate that was this interesting mix of slave free indentured and wealthy who seemed to have the same purpose and they were successful in the overthrow and of course the governor came back from England they were all caught and hanged etc but the consequence of that of a group that was not defined by race status or class attacking the powers-that-be was so horrible that they rewrote several laws and added some but for me the pertinent ones were any white could maim or kill anybody for any reason and not being prosecuted and that was the classic split because even if your interests as servants or indentured people are just poor farmers were the same as the Africans or the african-americans you would not join with them because you had this little perk which was whiteness which is a construction in order to divide particularly poor people and it has operated pretty much throughout the history of the country where people with the same economic interests are divided because of the friction that has been laid on people who benefit other people who own everything and that's the moment when it happened in this country you think that's a mold a moment and that's for one Everly that's what 1673 1670 before he's even there in Virginia and that kind of thing spread because it was profitable and useful and a protected landed gentry because they could divide and conquer I want to ask you about how you the writing of this book because it's beautifully written and what's most interesting about it in many ways is that each story builds on the other that at the beginning you're not entirely sure what's going on and it takes a while really maybe into the second chapter before you really understand what Lauren's story is all about as you're reading about Jacob you learn more about Lauren's story and and then in the next when you leave read Lina story then that fills in more details and on and on throughout the book why did you write it that way and that sort of layered kind of way well the structure was absolutely the the meaning as well as the hardest part of any novel but this one I wanted her to be on a journey going so we're important and I wanted her voice which would cut in to the other voices so she's first person first person and present tense to give it the immediacy everybody else is third person but they have to not only be who they are and what they want and what their circumstances are but they have to move that story a little bit so you're never out of the track you're never out never away from the gun that's shooting toward the end but at the same time you can pause and look around you and see who these people are and learn their relationships because they really are an interesting collection of as Lina says orphans really who make a life and one of the through places where you could have all these extraordinary people come together and belong together right because at one point they almost come together as a family absolute Rebecca who is Jacob's wife and Lina the young Native American woman they're almost like almost like sisters they certainly do friends right but he's OA ephemeral and it can't hold together and even that young girl sorrow who is you know a little bit apart from everybody but they can absorb her then dented servants who don't live there they work there they like those people it's a little society that they have created in the wilderness and they are it works until it doesn't but why doesn't it why can't it what is it about well I wanted this group to be sort of the earliest version of American individuality American self-sufficiency and I think I wanted to show the dangers of that you really do need a community you do need a structure whether it's a church or religion as Rebecca things or whether it's just belonging to a military or belonging to a try there's no outside thing that holds them together they would not have missed it had the master had lived but if you you know you you have to if you have one peg that's holding it all together then you see how vulnerable you are if you don't have this outside thing which is tribal or racial or religious or institutional or just you know colleagues and workers to hold it together when other things disappear but that's the tension then in an ad hoc world and its attention now how to be an individual in yourself and how to adorn privacy and at the same time belong to something larger than you and that tension is always going to be there always well thanks so much it was wonderful talking with you this is the life we've been talking with the writer Toni Morrison about her new book a mercy

Channel: NPR

Views: 89,946

Keywords: npr, books, knopf, randomhouse, authors, nobel, pulitzer, talk, book

Id: 7IZvMhQ2LIU

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 29 2008