Toni Morrison Talking Books

symptoms take a month to develop. Now on BBC News it's time for

Talking Books. I am an Razia Iqbal. My guest is Toni Morrison. And I

caught up with her at American Academy in Rome. She won the Nobel

Prize for literature in 1993. Her novels chronicle African-American

history. Her first book, The Bluest Eye to her achievement -- crowning

achievement, the lover. For her, all good art is political. -- be

love it. She is vocal about Toni Morrison, will come to Talking

Books. Thank you. You are widely acknowledged as one of America's

greatest writers but you constantly define yourself as a black American

writer. It is less important now but it was very important when I

started because African-American writers were not riding -- hiding

from the fact but they had a different kind of aggression about

the white gays. James Baldwin, rough Addison, those men were

confronting the white world and they took a different stance. When

I began to write, there was a complaint - are you saying that you

are an African American black writer? And I said, yes. I was very

aggressive about it because I did not want them to disregard not only

the subject-matter but my own ethnicity and race. Is there a

problem in one of the criticism made very early on that even before

you work gets out of the gate, it is already taken as representative

of gender or race. The novels can be perceived as socio-political

statements rather than works of fiction? Always. There was a

controversy about placement of books in bookstores and some black

writers wanted their own section and others wanted to be out for the

tyres, distributed, and the women wanted it in the same way - they

wanted a woman section, a feminist section and others did not. And

that effort to be individual and part of is always going to be there.

I think. Particularly in of writing because I write out of the African-

American culture always. It is what I am interested in. So interested

in that I'm making a point not just for writing purposes but there are

no major white men in any of my books. When I first realised it, it

was because it gave me such freedom. I do not have to deal with that and

also, I do not function of all right or riven leave through the

lens of the master. I do not look not interest to me. They are

created by the master, the white male or female as the case might be.

A one to take you back in your childhood, you grew up in Ohio. Was

their social and racial division? Was the class? Poverty. No class

differences. I was in a very small working close down, and steel mills.

Many people, particularly from Eastern Europe, from Italy, from

Mexico and African-Americans came to this town. We had one thing in

common which we were up Paul. And the other thing, busily the racial

difference, we had one high school. I had neighbours who were from all

over the world where I lived. Now, the differences were created, as

they say, on Sunday because there were 2000 churches. There were nine

different Catholic churches, four different black churches, also,

that was the separation was religious but otherwise, no. I was

stunned when I left the town to see what the world was really like.

Stunned. What were your perceptions when you first left? My mother and

father were both born in the south and they had stories, although they

left as very young people. But in Washington, where a first move to

South, I saw the signs - coloured, white, all those things on the bus

and there were places where you could not go to, downtown, big

department stores - Ladies' Room, no. Institution like segregation.

You non-fiction essays, used right up of different approaches to

dealing with being black in a white world. Your grandparents and your

parents, in what ways do their thinking inform you? I was very

impressed... I was impressed with all of their reactions. The strong

as was my father, who would not let white people in the house. White

people being neighbours, unless they were children. And he thought

they would never change, nothing would ever change. And I realised

very much later, there when he was 13 years old in in Georgia, he had

seen at two men, businessmen, shop owners, and lynched on his street,

so that is when he left and it made an enormous impression. My mother,

on the other hand, judge people one by one. She had no ideological or

racial or anything. My grandparents were, of course, different. They

left under duress. When homes are being taken and evacuated and they

came north. There is one interesting story, they went to

industrial places where there was work and they sent my mother and

her sister to school and the teacher did not know a long

division so my grandmother said, we have to move. You know, that had

little teenage teachers back in the day. Soap we moved to Bahrain and

that is where they lived. How would you describe your formation of your

nation of identity of being a black American woman based on what your

parents have taught shoot - the different approaches they had

taken? I dissociated myself for a long time. It was only very much

later, when I was in my 30s and 40s that I began to shake it. For me in

the beginning, as a child, and as a teenager even, that was all

theatrical to me. I thought it was... They could not mean that.

No-one is born that way. What are they talking about. How expensive

it is to have to found turns instead of one. It was almost like

it was a joke. I'm sorry to say. But that was my attitude about it

until later. When I actually toured the South and East BSO distinctive

differences. I was never in a threatening situation like my

parents. I could play it off. Once I was in college and graduate

school, other things and, I grew up - that's all I wanted to say.

wrote your first novel what he were an editor in at Random House, The

Bluest Eye. What prompted you to write the book? The prompt was the

screaming of how beautiful black people were. Black is beautiful. My

black queen. And I thought, by Amina, before we will get

beautiful,, so we are beautiful, he said we were not? It was not ours.

But then I remembered the incident with a childhood friend of mine, we

were about 10 or 11, and we were fussing about the existence of God.

And I said he'd certainly did exist and she said he did not and she had

proved and the proof was that she had prayed for blue eyes for two

years and he had not delivered. When you 19, that is very important.

A black girl? Very black, very black skin. I looked at her and for

the first time I saw two things - one, it would be grotesque if she

got them. If the Lord had answered her prayers. And the other thing

was, she is beautiful. You know, and nine he did not think of beauty.

You think he was cute. But real beauty. And that shocked me a

little bit. When I started to write, when I was still actually teaching

at Haward, then I put it down for ever, this tiny story and picked up

again when I went to Random House. By that time, it symbolised the me

what I wanted to say about self- loathing and about how it hurts and

can destroy people. You know, it comes freely from within the group

as well as the pervasive racism from outside. -- it comes up

frequently. When you take any anything you have to constantly

defend everything - he looks, your head, you're being. That is

crushing. What else can you do. That is where all your energy is.

Your first three novels, they do not have anything to do with the

white world. It is there, it is a condition, it is an oppression, but

the characters have to work out for themselves in that way they are and

who they are, you have felt -- forcing the reader to do the same

thing. I wake of saying, I'm black, so I have to behave in a certain

way. It is simple. You humanise the population in the text, in the book.

So there is a connection. I didn't want that, I'm reading about a

black person therefore I have to have either sympathy or understand.

I could write about terrible black people. My job is simply to

represent them are well. I do not judge them. The reader can. I am

not there to say this is a good person and this is a bad one.

that context of judgement, let's talk about the Lovat which ground

to reputation. It won the Pulitzer Prize and it takes place mainly

after the emancipation of slaves and it is the story of a woman who

chooses to slash the throat of her child rather than see the child and

slaved and the ghost of the child then haunts her. What is

extraordinary to me in reading the book is that you do not seem to

make a judgement about that Act. No. I wonder whether you can say

something about that because the consequences of what she does do

condemn her. Why do you choose not to make a judgement? It is based on

a real story. They had a child, and abolitionists wanted had tried for

murder. But that would mean that she was responsible for her

children. The slave owners wanted her tried for theft. Which meant

she had nothing to do with them. At the time, I remember somebody

saying, it was the right thing to do, killing her children but she

had no right to do it. And I could not make up my mind about that.

Until, the ghost appeared. I said, the only person who could make that

judgement about whether there was a good or bad thing was the girl she

killed. She would decide whether it was good or bad. So that lifted the

whole thing up for me. Once I was able to incorporate theoretically

her daughter, whether she is a ghost or a real person was murky.

This is clearly an allegory to do with America's shame of its history.

This book is now led by high-school students. Has this history now been

confronted by a larger society? it has been apologised for her and

disappear. Not among scholars or intelligence people. It is required

reading in almost every college course. There is time of literary

criticism on it for all sorts of reasons. I think it is spreading

but it may be unwise for me to remark on mates impact during the

political season, during the campaigns. Because that cancer

which is latent in America, which is racism, can recur at any moment.

There is no cure except time and generations. Time and generations.

This generation of young people are not interested. They are like I was

when I went to college. And they don't want to hear about it, they

don't understand what you're talking about. And there are more

mixed race... The culture they are exposed to Sikhs with African music

-- African-American music, song, dance, everything. They are not

uncomfortable, they are not afraid. It is not bother to them. I am

aware of the parts that this has not worked with. The older

generations were really terrified of a black man being in charge. A

smart black man being in charge. A dumb one they could handle, but

they've really smart one... There are so many vile, racist and truly

disgusting things that people say about President Barack Obama. I

always say, you wanna oh, I wonder what it would have been like if he

had won the presidency and his mother from cancers and his

grandmother from Kansas were two white people -- those two white

people, were alive and living in the White House. I wonder what the

language would be. Do you feel it is your duty to unearth things? So

much of what to write his about historical moments. What is the

impulse to do that as opposed to writing a novel set in contemporary

times? Because we have seen historic moments in the election of

President Obama. Is that something you have conceded all would like to

try? Yes. I am playing around with it on paper, as they say. It is

very, very hard. The story is difficult for a number of reasons,

one of which is that one of the main characters is an intellectual.

I have never written about an intellectual before. The other is

that I don't fully understand the contemporary world. I don't have

that hook. And we'll get it, though. But it is very hard, I have to tell

you. When you won the Nobel Prize in 1993, he said he felt pound to

be an American. I read your acceptance speech again. And I

wondered about that sentiment because it was echoed when a

Michelle Obama said, in 2008, when her husband received the nomination,

that for the first time she felt proud to be an American. Had you

been ashamed to be an American before that? (LAUGHS). It is

troubling. As soon as you leave America, you keep wondering, what

are they doing? No matter what happens in the rest of the world

which may be deplorable, it took 200 years for people in the US to

figure it out and they still haven't done it. They do really sad

things. The warmongers who never think twice. The predators.

Capitalism is all right but not predatory capitalism. Raul Crete

and that. I get disturbed. -- raw greed and theft. But in 1993, when

I won the Nobel Prize, I thought, "I am an American". It was the same

as when a farmer got elected. When -- a bar, got elected. -- President

Obama got elected. I always thought the American flag and those

marching parade square ugly. But when he got elected, I thought,

"that is a nice song. You get there is Marines..." but it was very

profound. I belonged in the country. I belonged. Nothing mattered, this

was my home. Now, I have been saying that all my life. In all of

my books. It is all about us and home. That was the first time I

felt that emotionally. I was totally unprepared for it. I was

happy Andy Kerr about the election and so on and about Michelle Obama

and about him. But I wasn't emotionally engaged. Intellectually,

I was, but this was something different. What does your gut tell

you about whether the fault lines decadesr

decades, whether they have changed since his presidency? Somehow. Some

have solidified. I wonder if you are referring to the kind of

undercurrent, the language of racism that you have talked about,

where people doubt that he is in fact an American. (LAUGHS). And it

is to do with the political rhetoric and the discourse that is

taking place. That he is a stranger, he is not us, he does not belong.

That is what they are saying. And that is about everything that the

opposition does. And what they're seeing is the thing that we used to

say in Vietnam. We burned the village in order to save it. They

are willing to crash the country in order to have him out. And why him?

It seems that on one level, you're saying that very little has changed.

And that this fault line of race in America is so deep that there is

not enough understanding to Bridget. Is that right? Not yet. I would

have said when the President was elected that these lines were

closing but now, it seems like they are deeper. People around it are

shooting... I heard, I don't know if it is true, he gets 200 death

threats per day. They all get them but these are not cashable. This is

terrible. He is the one who can endure it, survive it and triumph

over it. And that is the history of the race, the way he behaves in the

face of all of that racism. Black people's history is one of survival,

never of surrender. Never. But resistance, survival and triumph.

All of which we saw with Martin Luther King. His heroes were men

like him, Dundee... There were no bullets. They trained to those

young people in church is how to enjoy and name-calling, when people

poured things on them, through food at you... How to withstand -- how