today in Black history - feb 18

Award winning author Toni Morrison was born (Chloe Anthony Wofford) on February 18, 1931

I have always felt surrounded by Toni Morrison’s intricate words and creative genius. The Nobel Prize winner’s books were in my home growing up and in my classes throughout my schooling. Her work is both elegant and raw and listening to her speak can spark illumination in the darkest mental corners. To get a sense of her rhetorical mastery, you can check out her Nobel Lecture where she says:

“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind.”

If you’re interested in learning more about her life and work, Cornell University has an excellent LibGuide. There is also the documentary on Morrison’s life, The Pieces I Am: