Toni Morrison Remembers imagine...


Toni Morrison Remembers

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"'She wasn't even two years old when she died', said her mother.

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"'Too little to understand.'

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"'Maybe she don't want to understand', said her sister.

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"Ohio had been calling itself a state only 70 years

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"when first one brother and then the next snatched up his shoes

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"and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them."

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TONI: There's my house.

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That's where I was born, up there in the attic.

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My mother said it was very cold up there.

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-Mm, you had a terrace.

-You call that a terrace?!

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That's a porch!

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-Only hookers were born in hospitals in those days.

-Really?

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Married women had their babies at home.

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"'For a baby she throws a powerful spell', said Denver.

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"'No more powerful than the way I loved her', Sethe answered.

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"'Who would have thought a little old baby

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"'could harbour so much rage?'

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"'We could move', Sethe suggested once.

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"'What'd be the point?

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"'Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with

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"'some dead Negro's grief.

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"'We lucky this ghost is a baby.'"

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This is me in the first grade with a dress my grandmother made.

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It was red, and I had this bow in my hair

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that is braided so tight,

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you can barely close your eyes.

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That little girl is now often called America's national writer,

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their first Lady of Literature.

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She is now an honoured citizen of her hometown.

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Who is Toni Morrison, Zoe?

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It says here that Toni was the first African-American

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and the eighth woman to win the Nobel Prize.

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I think that's cool because she must have inspired

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a lot of African-American people.

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What would you thank her for?

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I would thank her for writing these books

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because we know how people feel back then.

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She shows what African-Americans had to go through.

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Now I can have friends who are different races

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like Julian, cos he's my best friend.

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Discrimination is still going on today

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because some people hate the President that we have

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because of his race.

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Toni Morrison has reimagined her own past and, with it,

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that of black America, especially of black women.

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TONI: I always felt like a partial American, a fraudulent American.

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And finally not American at all, just I felt like a black person.

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When this Nobel Prize was given to me,

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I felt American, probably, for the first time.

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Toni Morrison...

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HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

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She may be establishment, but she's still 100% radical.

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Her books are taught in schools but they're banned in some.

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Her recurrent theme of childhood trauma

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is too much for some people to face.

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She's feisty, forthright,

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an uneasy heroine for a still troubled nation.

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Nowadays, Toni Morrison lives in an apartment

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high up in downtown Manhattan.

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But her quite astonishing first novel

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was set in her hometown.

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It's about a black girl

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'who longed to have blue eyes.'

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When The Bluest Eye first came out, the reaction to it

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was pretty negative by a lot of the black community, wasn't it?

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Well, the black community didn't like it

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because it was, you know, incest.

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I mean, my sister banned it - you talk about banned books,

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she said she wouldn't let her children read it

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until they were 18.

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And they didn't sell any copies of it,

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it was very low and, um...I got 3,000,

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which I spent taking my mother and my father and my children

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to Aruba.

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We had a hell of a time, it was fantastic.

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For people who'd never, you know...

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My mother came home, she was talking about,

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"Do you know what?

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"They wash out your tub

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"and do you know, they turn your bed down?"

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None of this had ever been done for her,

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she was in ecstasy.

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That was the benefit of The Bluest Eye for me.

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The main character, Pecola,

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is the victim not just of white society,

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but of her black father.

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"There were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.

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"We thought at the time

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"that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby

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"that the marigolds did not grow.

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"We could think of nothing but our own magic.

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"If we planted the seeds,

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"and said the right words over them,

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"they would blossom and everything would be all right.

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"We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt

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"just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds

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"in his own plot of black dirt.

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"The seeds shriveled and died. Her baby, too."

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The trigger for that creation of Pecola in The Bluest Eye

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was in fact a girl that you met at school?

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Yeah, it was.

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I think we were 10 or 11, she was a close friend,

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and, um...

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We were quarrelling about the existence of God

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and I was very certain that there was a God

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and she was very certain that there was not.

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And then she stopped the conversation and the argument

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by saying she had proof of His non-existence,

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and I said, "What is it?",

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and she said, "I have been praying for two years for blue eyes

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"and obviously He has not delivered."

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It was a real epiphany, because I looked at her

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and thought this would be awful if God had given her blue eyes.

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And I realised she was absolutely beautiful

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and at ten, you don't think in those terms -

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somebody's cute or, you know, whatever, but not beauty

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and that was the first time I saw it.

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She was very dark, she had these wonderful almond eyes,

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high cheek bones, lovely, you could go on.

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And she wanted something...other.

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Well, you know, we all had these little dolls,

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these little blonde dolls that the grown-ups gave us with affection.

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-And the Shirley Temple, and the Mary Janes...

-Oh, God!

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..and all those things.

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-The Bojangles.

-Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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"I hated Shirley Temple.

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"Not because she was cute,

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"but because she danced with Bojangles,

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"who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy,

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"and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it

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"and chuckling with me.

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"Instead he was enjoying, sharing, giving a lovely dance thing

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"with one of those little white girls

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"whose socks never slid down under their heels.

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"I destroyed white baby dolls.

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"But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror.

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"The truly horrifying thing

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"was the transference of the same impulses

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"to little white girls."

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Is that what drove you to write?

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Because you had to tell a story

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because you felt it hadn't been told?

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I thought somebody probably wrote that book but I didn't know

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what it was and every little black child in literature

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or in theatre was a joke...

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..or a pet,

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a Topsy, like in Uncle Tom's Cabin,

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and I was one of those little people

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and I wanted to read about such a child.

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It took five years for me to write that really small book,

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um, to pay attention,

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pay attention to this child.

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It may be...

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Maybe she's in difficulty, she's obviously hurt,

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she's abused and misused,

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but take her seriously, please.

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It was a world full of secrets.

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There used to be a house behind our house, a small little,

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almost like a shed and a woman lived in there and her name was Trope.

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We were not allowed to go there.

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My grandmother thought she was...

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She wasn't a street walker but she had...

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She invited people in.

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Nice-looking woman and I thought about her a lot

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because she was the hidden, you know -

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"Don't go over there because..."

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Other places were out of bounds too.

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"'We can't go all the way to the lake.'

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"'Yes, we can. Come on.'

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"We walked down tree-lined streets of soft grey houses

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"leaning like tired ladies.

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"The streets changed - houses looked more sturdy,

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"their paint was newer,

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"porch posts straighter, yards deeper.

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"The lakefront houses were the loveliest.

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"Garden furniture, ornaments, windows like shiny eyeglasses.

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"The backyards of these houses fell away in green slopes

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"down to a strip of sand and then the blue Lake Erie,

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"lapping all the way to Canada.

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"We reached a city park laid out with rosebuds, fountains,

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"picnic tables.

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"It was empty now, but sweetly expectant

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"of clean, white, well-behaved children and parents

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"who would play there above the lake in summer

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"before half-running, half-stumbling down the slope

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"to the welcoming water.

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"Black people were not allowed in the park,

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"and so it filled our dreams."

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Toni was looking back to her childhood

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in the '30s and '40s -

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the sense of exclusion,

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the longing to be white.

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But she was writing this in the 1960s.

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There was a black proposition around

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and Black is Beautiful in the '60s

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and a sort of sense of "Let's move on",

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but you weren't ready to move on, you wanted to go back.

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No, no, no, I thought there was this little...

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I understood Black is Beautiful

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but I was...that was a generation a little bit younger than me

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and I thought, "Wait a minute, why are you...?

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"Do you have to say that? Of course we are."

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And then...is that all? It's about beauty again?

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Is that what makes us human, acceptable?

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And besides, it's too frail.

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It was part of what I really despise which was addressing white people.

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"Who are you talking to, are you talking to me?"

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"No, I know I'm beautiful."

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Or it doesn't matter to me.

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You're talking to white people who are saying you're not

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and therefore you should be segregated or oppressed.

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I'm not talking to white people -

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I'm talking, in my books, I'm reading them,

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so I'm talking to me

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which means I'm talking to black people.

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Whereas actually, whatever Black is Beautiful was,

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it was a sort of...it belonged to the other, to the white gaze.

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That's right, it was the white man's gaze.

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-Which is your phrase...

-Yes, that's what I wanted to avoid.

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Once...I always say this...

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Once I took white people out -

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I say white men, but I meant white people -

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it's like the whole world opened up.

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You could imagine anything, everything,

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instead of that little, what Jimmy Baldwin used to say,

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"Inside each of us,

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"a little white man lives on our shoulders."

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What's remarkable in your books

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is the empathy you show for men as well as women,

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even the rapist of this vulnerable child.

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He himself is vulnerable - there was that terrible scene.

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-Yeah, where he's...

-Where he is caught...

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-His first sexual encounter.

-Yeah.

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When he's innocent, he's innocent.

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"After some trouble with the buttons,

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"Cholly dropped his pants down to his knees.

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"But the excitement collecting inside him made him close his eyes

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"and regard her moans as no more than pine sighs over his head.

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"Just as he felt an explosion threatened,

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"Darlene froze and cried out.

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"He thought he'd hurt her, but when he looked at her face,

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"she was staring wildly at something over his shoulder.

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"He jerked around - there stood two white men,

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"one with a spirit lamp, the other with a flash light.

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"There was no mistake about their being white, he could smell it.

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"The men had long guns.

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"'Get on with it, nigger' said the flash light one.

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"'Sir?' said Cholly, trying to find a buttonhole.

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"I said, 'Get on with it and make it good, nigger, make it good.'

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"There was no place for Cholly's eyes to go."

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I mean, this is one character of many in here and he is,

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-in a way, the villain of the piece, you could say.

-Mm-hm.

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And yet there were so many stages in his life and in his experience,

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and they don't necessarily come in sequence...

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That's the other thing about your books.

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We get some clues, a bit like a detective story,

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enough to intrigue us.

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It is like life, isn't it?

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Things happen, you're not quite sure what happened,

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and then suddenly, it all makes sense later.

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It blazes before you.

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I don't read my books

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except publicly, when somebody asks me.

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'Do you know, I read Beloved a couple of weeks ago.'

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'I was signing it for somebody.'

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-Thank you so much.

-You're welcome.

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'And I just happened to turn to the first page'

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and I started reading.

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And I kept reading and I kept reading and I said to him

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something I normally don't say - I sometimes think -

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I said, "It's really good."

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Now, when you've been reading passages from The Bluest Eye,

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I'm thinking the same thing.

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-Did I do that wrong?

-You cannot do anything wrong!

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I wish the world knew that.

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THEY LAUGH

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Thank you for everything.

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She is my reason for being a literary critic.

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That inspired me.

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It's Salamishah - S-A-L-A-M-I-S-H-A-H.

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TONI LAUGHS

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-That took all my strength.

-I'm sure it did.

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-Oh!

-My parents' imagination.

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Yeah.

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Thank you very much for being you.

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So many of my students tell me, "I just love The Bluest Eye."

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Thank you, Ms Morrison.

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And it is because it is a book that has saved a lot of girls.

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I thought about asking you

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to sign your name on my arm under your quote here.

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Oh, my goodness.

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The first time I saw her, it was so amazing to see

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and a little bit alarming how people glommed onto her.

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It was a largely black crowd and they were so proud of her

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and also wanting the connection that I yearned for myself

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because anyone with that kind of understanding of black life,

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let alone maleness and femaleness, you do want them to cosy up to you

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and tell you a few things about how to live yourself.

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-You were fantastic. Thank you so much.

-My pleasure.

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Next, please.

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What I liked about her almost immediately was...

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how...welcoming she was.

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She made a sort of welcome table wherever she sat -

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and also her incredible sense of humour.

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LAUGHTER

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And people are always amazed that, you know, if you're that smart,

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then you can't be that funny too, but she gets to do both.

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APPLAUSE

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Would you get started with a reading from that novel

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before we start a conversation?

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LAUGHTER

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I just happen to have...

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Toni Morrison is making a now-rare public appearance

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to promote her new book.

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Now, if I pause in the reading,

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it's not because I don't know what's going on...

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..it's that I think I probably need and don't have my glasses.

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LAUGHTER

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At any rate, I'm just going to read a couple of pages in the voice

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and tell a story of a young girl who is called Rain

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because that is where the people who are taking care of her found her -

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sitting on the steps, shivering in the rain.

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"I don't want to kill them like I used to when I first got here

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"but then I wanted to kill everybody until they brought me a kitten.

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"She is a cat now and I tell her everything.

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"My black lady listens to me tell how it was.

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"Steve won't let me talk about it, neither will Evelyn.

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"They think I can read, but I can't.

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"Well, maybe a little. Signs and stuff.

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"Evelyn is trying to teach me. She calls it 'home schooling'.

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"I call it 'home drooling'

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"and 'home fooling'.

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"We are a fake family. OK, but fake.

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"Evelyn is a good substitute mother

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"but I'd rather have a sister like my black lady.

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"When we started walking back home,

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"after I told her everything about my life before Evelyn and Steve,

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"a truck with big boys in it passed us.

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"One of them hollered, 'Hey, Rain, who's your mammy?'

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"My black lady didn't turn around

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"but I stuck out my tongue and thumbed my nose at him.

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"One of them was Regis, a boy I know

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"because he comes to our house sometimes with his father

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"to give us firewood or baskets of corn.

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"The driver, an older boy,

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"turned the truck around so they could come after us.

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"Regis pointed a shotgun, just like Steve said.

0:22:020:22:07

"My black lady saw him and threw her arm in front of my face.

0:22:070:22:12

"The birdshot messed up her hand and arm.

0:22:120:22:17

"We fell, both of us, her on top of me.

0:22:170:22:20

"My heart was beating fast

0:22:200:22:24

"because nobody had done that before.

0:22:240:22:27

"I mean, Steve and Evelyn took me in and all,

0:22:270:22:34

"but nobody put their own self in danger to save me."

0:22:340:22:40

-You really inspired me.

-Good.

0:22:400:22:42

Toni has a fantastic memory, especially for childhood.

0:22:420:22:45

She really remembers how a small thing

0:22:450:22:49

can overwhelm a child.

0:22:490:22:51

You know, the taste of something or...

0:22:510:22:53

The ability that children have to do that,

0:22:530:22:56

and most adults lose this ability.

0:22:560:22:58

I know a lot about Toni's childhood that she's discussed with me and...

0:23:000:23:04

I mean, certainly...

0:23:060:23:08

What's amazing to me is that Toni is not...

0:23:110:23:14

She is not an angry person.

0:23:140:23:17

You know, there's a lot of anger in her books

0:23:180:23:21

and it's an anger...

0:23:210:23:23

..that obviously partakes of the totally appropriate anger

0:23:250:23:32

of American blacks about what was done to them

0:23:320:23:34

and what is still being done to them in a very different way.

0:23:340:23:38

But that is always mixed with something personal,

0:23:380:23:43

and I don't know Toni's history as a child,

0:23:430:23:47

as a young girl, enough to know

0:23:470:23:50

whether she is an angry person or was an angry person

0:23:500:23:54

and that the anger that she expresses

0:23:540:23:59

for this external reason,

0:23:590:24:00

the history of blacks in America,

0:24:000:24:02

isn't also connected to a personal anger,

0:24:020:24:04

because you can't separate these things.

0:24:040:24:06

You talk about your father, his anger with white men.

0:24:100:24:14

How did that manifest itself when you were a child?

0:24:140:24:17

Well, he wouldn't let them in the house.

0:24:170:24:19

You know, the insurance guy would have to stand out

0:24:190:24:22

if he was in the house.

0:24:220:24:24

And he always said, "They will never be better,

0:24:240:24:28

"nothing good will happen with white people ever",

0:24:280:24:31

and it was personal.

0:24:310:24:33

I think I was telling a story,

0:24:330:24:35

watching him throw a white man down the steps

0:24:350:24:38

and the person I was talking to said,

0:24:380:24:41

"Well, didn't you feel horrified at the violence?"

0:24:410:24:46

I said, "No."

0:24:460:24:48

I thought, "Oh, my father is strong enough to protect me."

0:24:480:24:52

You have to know that we were evicted from every place. You know...

0:24:570:25:00

Where you really? Why was that, then?

0:25:000:25:02

Because we were all poor.

0:25:020:25:04

I mean, the rent was 4. Oh, we...

0:25:040:25:07

Sometimes you can't make it.

0:25:080:25:10

My father was working three jobs, my mother's not working,

0:25:100:25:14

so I don't know how...

0:25:140:25:16

4 doesn't sound like much, but for them, it was.

0:25:160:25:20

You know, he gets 45 cents here, 30 cents there.

0:25:200:25:22

You've got to do stuff.

0:25:220:25:24

But my mother, when they put the eviction notice up on the wall...

0:25:240:25:30

..she just snatched it off.

0:25:310:25:33

THEY LAUGH

0:25:330:25:35

We were always moving from one...

0:25:350:25:37

Everybody was moving because you couldn't stay anywhere -

0:25:370:25:40

the money ran out.

0:25:400:25:42

And then, wonderfully for improvement,

0:25:420:25:47

there was World War II.

0:25:470:25:49

People of my father's age - say 38, 40 - with a family

0:25:540:25:58

were not drafted

0:25:580:25:59

and...got jobs in shipyards.

0:25:590:26:03

-He was a welder.

-A welder. Paid decent money.

0:26:030:26:08

And eventually, you know, we bought a house.

0:26:100:26:13

You know, the man who threw that white man down the steps

0:26:150:26:19

is the same man who told me...

0:26:190:26:22

I was working for a white woman when I was around 12,

0:26:220:26:26

cleaning up after school.

0:26:260:26:27

Yes, you were a domestic.

0:26:270:26:29

I was a domestic, very happy to be it.

0:26:290:26:32

I got 2 every week and I gave one to my mother

0:26:320:26:38

and one I could keep.

0:26:380:26:40

But when I started at this woman's house,

0:26:400:26:43

I told my father,

0:26:430:26:44

"She's mean to me, Daddy, she complains all the time,"

0:26:440:26:49

and he said...

0:26:490:26:50

"Go to work, get your money and come on home.

0:26:510:26:56

"You don't live there."

0:26:560:26:58

One place she virtually did live was the local library,

0:27:060:27:10

where she read and read and later got a job

0:27:100:27:12

that she much preferred to cleaning.

0:27:120:27:15

In those days, children's books, fairytales,

0:27:160:27:21

were on the bottom shelf where you could read them...

0:27:210:27:23

..and the next shelf was Faulkner or Tolstoy.

0:27:260:27:31

There was no YA - young adult - there was no transition physically.

0:27:310:27:36

They just put all the fairytales down there and then they got serious.

0:27:360:27:39

My grandparents, they were southerners.

0:27:410:27:44

They were sharecroppers.

0:27:440:27:46

They were unschooled...

0:27:480:27:51

..and they couldn't read.

0:27:520:27:53

They were in a world where it was against the law to read.

0:27:540:27:59

You could go to jail or be fined

0:28:000:28:03

if you were white and taught a black person to read.

0:28:030:28:08

That says it all about reading.

0:28:080:28:11

So my family took the whole thing very serious.

0:28:110:28:14

It was like a revolutionary act.

0:28:140:28:16

So, as a child, she read all the classics.

0:28:170:28:19

But stories also came from her mother

0:28:190:28:22

who was brought up in the South.

0:28:220:28:24

My mother was eight when she left.

0:28:250:28:28

She talked about the South like it was paradise.

0:28:280:28:32

-Did she?

-Oh, yeah.

0:28:320:28:34

She talked about ghosts that she'd seen in the woods,

0:28:360:28:40

she talked about relatives

0:28:400:28:43

and it was like this fairytale place for her.

0:28:430:28:46

She was always smiling when she remembered it.

0:28:480:28:51

But she never went back.

0:28:510:28:53

My father, who said he hated it,

0:28:530:28:55

went back every year to visit relatives and so on.

0:28:550:28:59

-And then there were ghost stories that your...?

-Oh, yes.

0:29:040:29:08

Ghost stories, killings... I mean, you know...

0:29:080:29:11

Think of Little Red Riding Hood - that's grotesque!

0:29:110:29:14

Every story was a horror story.

0:29:160:29:19

Then there was the radio.

0:29:250:29:26

When you listened to a little 15-minute narrative on the radio,

0:29:270:29:31

as it was in the '30s, you had to imagine it,

0:29:310:29:34

because you could only hear it.

0:29:340:29:37

-You had to picture it.

-Yes, you had to picture it.

0:29:370:29:39

# Hear, you sinners, hear my call

0:29:390:29:44

# Satan's waitin' for you all

0:29:440:29:48

# Better get your souls washed white

0:29:480:29:52

# Better see the light

0:29:520:29:54

# Amen! #

0:29:540:29:56

The third thing, which is really important,

0:29:570:30:00

is that my mother sang all the time...

0:30:000:30:01

..and she had the best voice I have ever heard in my life.

0:30:030:30:06

You know, maybe Jessye Norman, but that's a tight race. SHE LAUGHS

0:30:060:30:11

I have said to her very often that she wasn't so much writing

0:30:110:30:16

as she was channelling.

0:30:160:30:18

The ancestors were speaking through her

0:30:180:30:20

and I think they continue to do so.

0:30:200:30:22

And she doesn't deny it.

0:30:220:30:24

She accepts my silliness

0:30:240:30:26

when I'm talking to her about her writing.

0:30:260:30:28

But I really do feel that there is so much to be said,

0:30:280:30:32

so many experiences,

0:30:320:30:35

the collective and the individual experiences.

0:30:350:30:37

She doesn't spare the rod, she tells the truth

0:30:450:30:48

and she tells it in a way

0:30:480:30:50

that makes it possible for people who are resistant to this history

0:30:500:30:55

to simply...

0:30:550:30:56

They are forced to embrace it, forced to acknowledge it

0:30:560:31:01

and forced to recognise the power of her words.

0:31:010:31:05

My goodness.

0:31:050:31:06

It is after the Civil War and black Southerners

0:31:080:31:11

are establishing their own settlements in the West.

0:31:110:31:14

"Here, freedom was not entertainment,

0:31:160:31:19

"like a carnival or a hoedown that you can count on once a year.

0:31:190:31:23

"Here, freedom was a test administered by the natural world

0:31:240:31:27

"that a man had to take for himself every day.

0:31:270:31:31

"If he passed enough tests long enough, he was king.

0:31:310:31:34

"They were proud that none of their women had ever worked

0:31:360:31:40

"in a white man's kitchen or nursed a white child.

0:31:400:31:43

"Although field labour was harder and carried no status,

0:31:430:31:46

"they believed the rape of women who worked in white kitchens was,

0:31:460:31:49

"if not a certainty, a distinct possibility,

0:31:490:31:53

"neither of which they could bear to contemplate.

0:31:530:31:57

"So, they exchanged that danger for the relative safety of brutal work."

0:31:570:32:01

Toni does most of her writing now not in her New York apartment

0:32:040:32:08

but in her boathouse up the Hudson River.

0:32:080:32:11

A fire here 20 years ago destroyed most of her possessions.

0:32:130:32:17

But she did save some family photos

0:32:170:32:19

'and her high school yearbook from when she graduated in 1949.'

0:32:190:32:25

-We're nearly there. The Vs.

-Those are the Vs?

-Yeah.

0:32:280:32:31

'She was called Chloe Wofford then.'

0:32:310:32:34

-Zowada, Whitaker, Wilcox...

-SHE LAUGHS

0:32:340:32:38

Where am I?

0:32:400:32:42

-Ah!

-There she is!

0:32:430:32:45

This is Chloe Wofford.

0:32:450:32:47

She's been dolled up for it, as well, for the occasion.

0:32:470:32:52

-I wore earrings, no lipstick.

-Yeah.

0:32:520:32:55

Wow.

0:32:550:32:56

Now, here you are in this picture.

0:32:560:32:59

"They led the 1949ers."

0:32:590:33:00

Does that mean that you distinguished yourself?

0:33:000:33:03

Yes, well, I was the treasurer.

0:33:030:33:06

Great skirt. I remember it.

0:33:060:33:08

-Dark maroon...

-And white socks.

-..and cream...

0:33:080:33:11

Oh, yes, thick white socks, we all wore those.

0:33:110:33:15

-Physical education.

-Oh, dear.

0:33:180:33:22

"Senior and junior girls who are interested in books

0:33:220:33:25

"are given an opportunity to work in the school library

0:33:250:33:28

"under the direction of Miss Pitts."

0:33:280:33:30

Oh, yes, I remember her.

0:33:300:33:32

What was she like?

0:33:320:33:34

She was rather sweet.

0:33:340:33:36

-Miss Pitts was the typing teacher.

-A-ha!

0:33:360:33:39

You know, in those days, women who were teachers were highly respected.

0:33:390:33:46

It was one of the few professional jobs.

0:33:460:33:49

So they were very proud of themselves and we looked up to them.

0:33:490:33:55

Home economics. That's called cooking in English.

0:33:550:33:58

THEY CHUCKLE

0:33:580:34:00

Dear Lord...

0:34:040:34:05

'From school, she went on to Howard in Washington,

0:34:170:34:20

'the most prestigious of the black universities.'

0:34:200:34:22

Oh, wow! That is a picture!

0:34:240:34:26

SHE LAUGHS

0:34:260:34:27

"Howard University coming home queen...

0:34:270:34:31

-"Runner-up, Toni Morrison."

-I didn't win.

0:34:310:34:33

You should have won. Look at that!

0:34:330:34:35

He's a good-looking guy.

0:34:350:34:37

-Yeah, there were all lovely.

-Yeah.

0:34:370:34:40

"Without any drowsiness or warning,

0:34:400:34:42

"she fell asleep.

0:34:420:34:44

"There out of that dark void sprang a vivid, fully felt dream.

0:34:440:34:49

"Booker's hand was moving between her thighs

0:34:490:34:52

"and when her arms flew up and closed over his back,

0:34:520:34:55

"he extracted his fingers and slid between her legs

0:34:550:34:59

"what they call the pride and wealth of nations.

0:34:590:35:01

"She wrapped her legs around his rocking hips

0:35:010:35:04

"as though too slow them or help them or keep them there.

0:35:040:35:08

"Bride woke up moist and humming."

0:35:080:35:10

I did say to Toni very early on, "I really like your sex scenes."

0:35:100:35:14

I know!

0:35:140:35:16

It's like, more, more!

0:35:160:35:18

But they're all so different, aren't they?

0:35:180:35:20

-They are.

-The book is full of them.

0:35:200:35:22

There's one in Sula where Sula gets into bed with her lover

0:35:220:35:25

and wants desperately for him to make love to her and he won't.

0:35:250:35:29

And I remember as a teenager, I thought, "This is horrible!"

0:35:290:35:32

"This is my idea of a nightmare."

0:35:320:35:36

And this one is completely different.

0:35:360:35:38

They're all different, but luscious.

0:35:380:35:40

God Help The Child gives a modern twist

0:35:420:35:44

to the themes of her first novel -

0:35:440:35:46

the favouring of light-skinned over dark,

0:35:460:35:49

not just white over black,

0:35:490:35:51

but a hierarchy among black people, too.

0:35:510:35:54

This reared its head at college, in the South.

0:35:550:35:58

I learned about what we call skin privileges

0:36:040:36:07

when I went away to college -

0:36:070:36:10

powerful racial discrimination.

0:36:100:36:13

If I saw a white man walking down the street and I was by myself,

0:36:130:36:17

I'd cross the street.

0:36:170:36:19

If I saw a black man, I would run toward him for safety.

0:36:190:36:24

And on campus, where I was feeling safe and happy,

0:36:260:36:29

there was this other kind of discrimination

0:36:290:36:32

where people were ranked on the colour of their skin socially.

0:36:320:36:36

In the new novel, the main character is rejected by her mother

0:36:390:36:43

because she is too dark,

0:36:430:36:45

but as an adult makes a virtue of her ebony blackness.

0:36:450:36:49

"I became a deep, dark beauty

0:36:500:36:53

"who doesn't need Botox for kissable lips

0:36:530:36:56

"or tanning spas to hide a deathlike pallor.

0:36:560:36:59

"I sold my elegant blackness to all those childhood ghosts.

0:36:590:37:04

"I have to say, forcing those tormentors -

0:37:040:37:08

"the real ones and others like them -

0:37:080:37:11

"to drool with envy when they see me,

0:37:110:37:13

"is more than payback.

0:37:130:37:15

"It's glory."

0:37:150:37:16

Toni Morrison studied and later taught at Howard.

0:37:180:37:22

Her friend Jessie Norman was there soon after.

0:37:220:37:25

Unlike Toni, Jessie was brought up in the South.

0:37:250:37:29

It must have been a defining experience for her as a writer.

0:37:290:37:32

I'm certain that it had to be.

0:37:320:37:33

Imagine the students that were there

0:37:330:37:36

and their stories from Arkansas and Alabama and Georgia and Mississippi

0:37:360:37:41

and all of these incredible experiences,

0:37:410:37:44

and so that had to have been a widening of her own thought

0:37:440:37:48

about what had happened

0:37:480:37:49

and what was still happening

0:37:490:37:51

and what unfortunately is still happening.

0:37:510:37:54

I recognise everything that she writes

0:37:580:38:00

because it actually happened and it wasn't that long ago

0:38:000:38:05

that we had people gathering at a lynching,

0:38:050:38:10

a person with a rope or something around the neck

0:38:100:38:14

and hung from a tree.

0:38:140:38:17

That people gathered to look at this

0:38:170:38:19

as though it were some sort of entertainment.

0:38:190:38:22

It wasn't that long ago.

0:38:220:38:24

MUSIC: Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday

0:38:240:38:26

# Southern trees bear a strange fruit... #

0:38:260:38:32

Lynchings carried on well into the 20th century.

0:38:320:38:35

# And blood at the root... #

0:38:370:38:39

This was in 1911.

0:38:390:38:41

# Black bodies swingin'

0:38:410:38:44

# In the Southern breeze. #

0:38:440:38:48

It was fashionable to take photographs of lynchings

0:38:480:38:50

and circulate them as postcards.

0:38:500:38:53

# From the poplar trees. #

0:38:530:38:56

Toni Morrison put pictures like that into a book she edited -

0:39:110:39:15

The Black Book, a sort of scrapbook,

0:39:150:39:18

which gave black people a history.

0:39:180:39:21

The book for which she later became famous, Beloved,

0:39:230:39:27

was inspired by this cutting.

0:39:270:39:29

"When the slave hunters came to the house

0:39:310:39:33

"in which they were concealed,

0:39:330:39:34

"she caught a shovel and struck two of her children on the head,

0:39:340:39:39

"and cut the throat of the third."

0:39:390:39:41

The Black Book was the fruit of the Civil Rights Movement

0:39:570:40:00

and Black Power.

0:40:000:40:02

She was now Toni, not Chloe,

0:40:050:40:08

and Morrison after a man she'd married and divorced.

0:40:080:40:11

She was working in publishing.

0:40:110:40:13

It was her form of activism.

0:40:160:40:19

I thought, "I'm not out in the streets marching,

0:40:190:40:22

"I'm not giving speeches", etc - it was a very active time.

0:40:220:40:27

So I thought, "Well, I want the voices documented,

0:40:290:40:33

"I don't want them distorted by this columnist or this political...

0:40:330:40:37

"I want them to say what they say."

0:40:370:40:40

And so I deliberately chose Toni Cade Bambara,

0:40:400:40:44

Gail Jones, the writers, the poets,

0:40:440:40:48

Dumas, who's an incredible writer,

0:40:480:40:51

and along with the political figures, their story.

0:40:510:40:55

It was deliberate, it was calculated

0:40:550:40:58

and I thought, "I can't leave that up to 'them'."

0:40:580:41:04

She published Muhammad Ali,

0:41:060:41:09

the boxer who was persona non grata in some circles

0:41:090:41:13

since he'd changed his name

0:41:130:41:15

and started championing black political causes.

0:41:150:41:18

Muhammad Ali, he was marvellous.

0:41:200:41:23

He didn't pay much attention to me as an editor in the beginning.

0:41:230:41:27

If I asked him a question,

0:41:270:41:28

he would answer a man or turn to a man,

0:41:280:41:31

and I thought, "Oh, God."

0:41:310:41:33

And the men, the sales force, the other guys, they were in awe -

0:41:340:41:38

"Look at his hands! Oh, my, did you see his...?"

0:41:380:41:42

They weren't gonna tell him anything and they did anything he wanted to.

0:41:420:41:46

And I thought, "This is not gonna work."

0:41:460:41:48

And then I remembered that I had read an article in the New York Times

0:41:480:41:52

where an older woman was being evicted.

0:41:520:41:56

He did something to prevent it,

0:41:560:41:59

and I thought, "He respects older women."

0:41:590:42:01

So I went into my mommy role

0:42:030:42:07

and while everybody else was oohing and aahing

0:42:070:42:10

I'd say, "Ali, get up for a minute," and he would stand up.

0:42:100:42:14

I'd say, "Go over there, sit down, the reporters are coming."

0:42:140:42:17

He did everything I said so long as I was not a girl.

0:42:170:42:22

It's extremely difficult to win the revolutionary struggle.

0:42:220:42:27

No...more...prisons.

0:42:270:42:30

In the lengthening list of embattled black militants,

0:42:300:42:33

the name and already the legend of Angela Davis are unique.

0:42:330:42:37

Another fighter that Toni edited was the FBI's most wanted, Angela Davis.

0:42:390:42:45

A young academic, a communist, a Black Panther,

0:42:450:42:49

she bought the gun that was used by black prisoners in an escape bid.

0:42:490:42:54

A highly controversial figure, she became a heroine of the left.

0:42:540:42:59

Toni Morrison contacted me

0:43:010:43:03

shortly after I was released from jail.

0:43:030:43:07

She raised the prospect of my writing an autobiography.

0:43:090:43:15

My first response was, at...how old was I then?

0:43:150:43:21

I think I was 27.

0:43:210:43:23

How could I possibly write an autobiography?

0:43:230:43:27

I was far too young.

0:43:270:43:29

So that was the beginning of our friendship.

0:43:290:43:33

Angela came to the office and we talked

0:43:330:43:36

to see whether she liked or trusted me and she did.

0:43:360:43:40

And so she wrote the book, I edited it, shaped it a little bit.

0:43:400:43:45

She helped me to think about a very different type of writing,

0:43:450:43:50

by asking me, "Well, what was in the room?

0:43:500:43:55

"What did it look like, what did it sound like?"

0:43:550:43:59

And eventually, the autobiography emerged from those conversations.

0:43:590:44:06

Morrison was a mentor to others, but all the while, she was writing,

0:44:090:44:13

she was leading a double life.

0:44:130:44:16

I was in the secretarial pool at Random House.

0:44:160:44:20

She said, "Would you please type something for me?

0:44:200:44:22

So I said, "Sure, fine."

0:44:220:44:24

We realised later that we were typing parts of The Bluest Eye.

0:44:240:44:28

I would often ride with her

0:44:350:44:38

from her house to the office in Manhattan.

0:44:380:44:43

She always had a small pad nearby and a pen,

0:44:430:44:46

and when the traffic stopped, she would write something.

0:44:460:44:50

She was also single mother with two small sons.

0:44:510:44:56

And at her house, cooking for her sons,

0:44:560:45:00

she might take 30 seconds out of that task

0:45:000:45:03

and she would scribble something down.

0:45:030:45:06

She was really so immersed in the lives of her characters

0:45:060:45:10

that she was living simultaneously in two worlds.

0:45:100:45:14

How did you manage all that?

0:45:140:45:17

I am only aware now of the errors I made,

0:45:170:45:23

um...the difficulties,

0:45:230:45:25

because during the time of rearing them and working and running about,

0:45:250:45:32

it was just the next thing to do.

0:45:320:45:35

I remember sitting in my office with a yellow legal pad

0:45:350:45:43

and I was so overwhelmed that I wrote a list of everything I had to do,

0:45:430:45:47

everything, you know.

0:45:470:45:50

Something my mother, something New York Times -

0:45:500:45:53

you know, everything.

0:45:530:45:55

And then I decided to write what I wanted to do

0:45:550:45:59

and there were two things -

0:45:590:46:02

the first was mother my children, the second was write books.

0:46:020:46:07

"'You think I don't know what your life is like

0:46:090:46:11

"'just because I ain't livin' it?

0:46:110:46:13

"'I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.'

0:46:130:46:16

"'What's that?'

0:46:160:46:17

"'Dying. Just like me.

0:46:170:46:20

"'But the difference is they dyin' like a stump.

0:46:200:46:22

"'Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods.

0:46:220:46:26

"'I sure did live in this world.'

0:46:260:46:28

"'Really? What have you got to show for it?'

0:46:280:46:31

"'Show? To who?

0:46:310:46:32

"'Girl, I got my mind and what goes on in it,

0:46:320:46:36

"'which is to say I got me.'"

0:46:360:46:38

Lorain, Ohio, my hometown.

0:46:400:46:43

After the success of her third book, Song of Solomon,

0:46:430:46:47

she gave up her job in publishing to write,

0:46:470:46:50

though she kept one foot on the ground by teaching too.

0:46:500:46:53

She wasn't just championing women and their lives,

0:46:550:46:58

she wanted men to be free as well.

0:46:580:47:00

Song of Solomon was very representative

0:47:030:47:06

of the world my father came from,

0:47:060:47:08

the black bourgeoisie,

0:47:080:47:10

but it was also an evocation of something

0:47:100:47:13

I was afraid of for myself, which was to claim space.

0:47:130:47:18

How did you claim space and not suffer as a black man?

0:47:180:47:26

The entire book turned my world around

0:47:260:47:30

by showing me that I had been living there the whole time,

0:47:300:47:34

I just had never had any language for it.

0:47:340:47:37

The main character in Song of Solomon

0:47:410:47:43

is known as Milkman,

0:47:430:47:45

because he was breast-fed for so long.

0:47:450:47:48

His father was called Macon Dead.

0:47:480:47:50

Slaves had no names of their own -

0:47:500:47:53

they were called after their owners or had made up names.

0:47:530:47:58

I'm always intrigued to know

0:47:580:48:00

what people are going to be called in your books,

0:48:000:48:02

whether it's you doing it or it's really,

0:48:020:48:04

you know...where it comes from.

0:48:040:48:06

They tell me what their names are.

0:48:060:48:08

-They tell you what their names are?

-Yeah.

-Do they speak to you, your characters?

0:48:080:48:12

Oh, yes. You know, I can...

0:48:120:48:13

If I used the wrong name, nothing happens with the character.

0:48:130:48:18

If I get the right name, if I hear it right,

0:48:180:48:21

then they come alive.

0:48:210:48:23

They sometimes kind of threaten you a little bit.

0:48:240:48:28

In Song of Solomon, Pilate, I had to shut her up.

0:48:280:48:32

Macon Dead, where did that come from?

0:48:320:48:35

Oh, well, some historical stuff I read about.

0:48:370:48:40

Freed slaves taking names and getting names and choosing names,

0:48:400:48:46

and the indifference of the northerners

0:48:460:48:51

who were writing this down.

0:48:510:48:52

"'Papa couldn't read, couldn't even sign his name,

0:48:540:48:57

"'had a mark he used.

0:48:570:48:58

"'They tricked him.

0:48:580:49:00

"'He signed something, I don't know what,

0:49:000:49:03

"'and they told him they owned his property.

0:49:030:49:06

"'He never read nothing.

0:49:080:49:10

"'Everything bad that ever happened to him

0:49:100:49:13

"'happened because he couldn't read.

0:49:130:49:16

"Got his name messed up cos he couldn't read.

0:49:160:49:18

"'His name? How?'

0:49:190:49:21

"'When freedom came, all the colored people in the state

0:49:220:49:25

"'had to register with the Freedman's Bureau.'

0:49:250:49:28

"'Your father was a slave?'

0:49:290:49:32

"'What kind of foolish question is that?

0:49:320:49:34

"'Of course he was.

0:49:340:49:36

"'Papa was in his teens and went to sign up

0:49:360:49:40

"'but the man behind the desk was drunk.

0:49:400:49:43

"'He asked Papa where he was born.

0:49:430:49:45

"'Papa said, 'Macon.'

0:49:450:49:46

"'Then he asked him who his father was. Papa said, 'He's dead.'

0:49:480:49:52

"'Well, the Yankee wrote it all down but in the wrong spaces

0:49:550:49:59

"'and in the space of his name,

0:49:590:50:00

"'the fool wrote, 'Dead' comma 'Macon.'

0:50:000:50:04

"'But Papa couldn't read so he never found out

0:50:040:50:07

"'what he was registered as till Mama told him.'"

0:50:070:50:10

Even if it's hundreds of years ago, it doesn't go away.

0:50:130:50:16

Oh, yeah, it doesn't go away. It doesn't go away.

0:50:160:50:19

The past colours the present, and the present contorts the past,

0:50:190:50:23

so that's life.

0:50:230:50:24

You have to live like that.

0:50:240:50:26

Slavery haunts her books.

0:50:290:50:31

Beloved is the story of Sethe,

0:50:330:50:35

a slave woman who escapes the south across the Ohio River.

0:50:350:50:39

The Ohio was their River Jordan,

0:50:430:50:45

their passage to the promised land.

0:50:450:50:48

But even north of the river, Sethe and her baby were not safe.

0:50:510:50:55

She could be seized by slave catchers

0:50:570:51:00

and taken back south.

0:51:000:51:01

"Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt

0:51:030:51:08

"at the feet of a nigger woman

0:51:080:51:09

"holding a blood-soaked child to her chest with one hand,

0:51:090:51:13

"and an infant by the heels on the other.

0:51:130:51:16

"She did not look at them.

0:51:170:51:19

"She simply swung the baby toward the wall planks,

0:51:190:51:22

"missed, and tried to connect a second time

0:51:220:51:24

"when out of nowhere

0:51:240:51:26

"the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them

0:51:260:51:30

"and snatched the baby from the arc of its mother's swing."

0:51:300:51:34

It's the dead baby, Beloved,

0:51:390:51:42

who returns to haunt Sethe's house.

0:51:420:51:45

This slave pen was just south of the Ohio River,

0:51:470:51:51

on a farm in Kentucky,

0:51:510:51:53

a farm like Sweet Home,

0:51:530:51:55

where Sethe was raped and savagely beaten.

0:51:550:51:59

My great-grandfather, I got to see every day,

0:51:590:52:02

and he was born before slavery ended

0:52:020:52:05

and his family was brought across

0:52:050:52:08

from Virginia into Kentucky.

0:52:080:52:10

This building, it's a human warehouse,

0:52:120:52:15

a place where people of African descent were kept and stored

0:52:150:52:20

and then later marched from Kentucky

0:52:200:52:23

760 miles to Natchez, Mississippi to be sold.

0:52:230:52:27

Sold by skin colour, by skill.

0:52:290:52:31

One of the myths is we were only good for farm labour.

0:52:310:52:35

My great-grandfather was the Westmorelands' blacksmith.

0:52:360:52:40

As my dad told me when I was eight,

0:52:420:52:44

anything that was made of metal on that plantation,

0:52:440:52:47

my great-grandfather made it.

0:52:470:52:49

So their value was twice that of the ordinary slave,

0:52:490:52:54

sometimes three times.

0:52:540:52:55

In America, one of the most painful parts of being despised

0:52:590:53:05

is being told you're nobody and that you have no history,

0:53:050:53:09

you have no value

0:53:090:53:11

and that you're just a burden, a waste.

0:53:110:53:14

People think that we came here to take something,

0:53:170:53:20

to be given something.

0:53:200:53:22

This building teaches that we came and we had value,

0:53:240:53:29

we built, we contributed...

0:53:290:53:31

..and that when people needed money,

0:53:320:53:36

..we were sold, just like a tractor...

0:53:380:53:40

..or something of real value

0:53:420:53:44

and that, in the process, these people with dark skin,

0:53:440:53:48

people with beige skin,

0:53:480:53:49

people with almost white skin, helped to build America.

0:53:490:53:53

Toni Morrison said she saw no memorials to slavery,

0:54:070:54:10

so that was what Beloved was for.

0:54:100:54:13

Her words inspired people to make a memorial.

0:54:160:54:19

"There is no place you or I can go to think about or not think about,

0:54:210:54:25

"to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves.

0:54:250:54:30

"There's no 300-foot tower, there's no small bench by the road."

0:54:310:54:35

This is now a place to sit and remember.

0:54:390:54:42

"She shouted, 'Let the children come',

0:54:460:54:48

"and they ran from the trees toward her.

0:54:480:54:51

"'Let your mothers hear you laugh',

0:54:510:54:53

"she told them, and the woods rang.

0:54:530:54:56

"The adults looked on and could not help smiling.

0:54:560:54:59

"Then, 'Let the grown men come', she shouted.

0:54:590:55:02

"They stepped out one-by-one from among the ringing trees.

0:55:020:55:06

"'Let your wives and your children see you dance', she told them,

0:55:060:55:09

"and ground life shuddered under their feet.

0:55:090:55:12

"Finally, she called the women to her.

0:55:120:55:15

"'Cry', she told them.

0:55:150:55:16

"'For the living and the dead. Just cry.'

0:55:160:55:19

"And without covering their eyes, the women let loose.

0:55:190:55:22

"It started that way, laughing children, dancing men,

0:55:220:55:26

"crying women, then it got mixed up.

0:55:260:55:28

"Women stopped crying and danced, and men sat down and cried,

0:55:280:55:32

"children danced, women laughed, children cried until,

0:55:320:55:35

"exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the clearing

0:55:350:55:39

"damp and gasping for breath."

0:55:390:55:41

Through that account of a woman who would rather kill her child

0:56:090:56:15

than see it sold into slavery,

0:56:150:56:17

I came to understand something about a history that I'd been studying

0:56:170:56:20

that I had never understood before.

0:56:200:56:22

Just the way the language moved, the music, the underlying music

0:56:250:56:29

of the language, was so delightful to me,

0:56:290:56:32

it was so...

0:56:320:56:34

It was just so intensely pleasurable a reading experience,

0:56:340:56:37

notwithstanding the heart-breaking subject matter,

0:56:370:56:40

that I remember thinking,

0:56:400:56:42

"Not only is this the way that I want to write one day,

0:56:420:56:44

"this is the only thing I ever really want to read."

0:56:440:56:47

And that there was this literary master being introduced to me

0:56:470:56:51

who looked in some way like me meant the world to me.

0:56:510:56:56

# Roll up the bed

0:56:580:57:01

# Springs hard as lead

0:57:010:57:03

# Feet like old Ned

0:57:030:57:06

# Wish I was dead

0:57:060:57:08

# All my night through I've been so black and blue...#

0:57:080:57:12

Singing was never just entertaining,

0:57:120:57:16

it was always about something,

0:57:160:57:18

it was like a powerful, rhythmic sound of poetry,

0:57:180:57:23

spirituals, the blues.

0:57:230:57:26

You know, it's always interesting to me that the blues

0:57:260:57:29

-is about lost love...

-Yes.

0:57:290:57:31

..where a man loves a woman or "Where's my man?"

0:57:310:57:37

But they're never stingy.

0:57:370:57:40

For me, it's identifiably part and heart of the black culture,

0:57:400:57:47

is that generosity and that openness.

0:57:470:57:51

Somebody once said nobody loves like black people.

0:57:510:57:57

"When spring comes to the city,

0:58:110:58:14

"people notice one another in the road.

0:58:140:58:18

"On trolleys and park benches they settle thighs

0:58:200:58:26

"on a seat in which hundreds have done it too.

0:58:260:58:30

"Copper coins dropped in the pan

0:58:340:58:38

"have been swallowed by children

0:58:380:58:40

"and tested by gypsies,

0:58:400:58:43

"but it's still money and people smile at that.

0:58:430:58:46

"It's the time of year when the city urges contradiction most,

0:58:480:58:54

"giving you a taste for a single room,

0:58:540:58:58

"occupied by you alone,

0:58:580:59:00

"as well as craving to share it with someone you passed in the street."

0:59:000:59:05

I love the lyricism of her writing.

0:59:100:59:14

You read a paragraph and think, "Oh, that is wonderful.

0:59:160:59:19

"Why can't I think like that, or talk like that?"

0:59:190:59:23

Because there is music in her writing.

0:59:230:59:25

It's free-form, fragmented, wheeling around in time,

0:59:280:59:33

just like jazz.

0:59:330:59:34

Toni is influenced by a multiplicity of traditions...

0:59:390:59:43

..African-American cultural traditions...

0:59:460:59:49

..as well as high modernist traditions,

0:59:510:59:55

and so many of the things that we might find, um...curious...

0:59:551:00:00

..such as disrespect for chronology,

1:00:031:00:06

are traits that we can find in masterworks

1:00:061:00:09

of 20th-century literature.

1:00:091:00:11

She has appropriated those techniques

1:00:121:00:15

in telling these tales

1:00:151:00:17

that have nothing to do with the high modernist tradition.

1:00:171:00:21

"I'm crazy about this city.

1:00:241:00:26

"Daylight slants like a razor, cutting the buildings in half.

1:00:261:00:30

"The city in 1926.

1:00:321:00:35

"At last, at last everything's ahead.

1:00:361:00:39

"Here comes the new. Look out!

1:00:411:00:43

"There goes the sad stuff, the bad stuff,

1:00:431:00:47

"the things nobody could help stuff.

1:00:471:00:50

"The way everybody was then and there, forget that -

1:00:501:00:54

"history is over."

1:00:541:00:56

I'll never forget that image in Beloved...

1:01:001:01:04

..where there are two little...

1:01:061:01:08

The imprints of the two little hands of a child on a cake,

1:01:081:01:15

you know?

1:01:151:01:17

It's just a...

1:01:171:01:19

It takes one's breath away

1:01:201:01:23

in the way that many poems,

1:01:231:01:29

but few novels do.

1:01:291:01:32

In Toni Morrison's writing,

1:01:321:01:34

the pressure per square inch is very high.

1:01:341:01:37

Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved

1:01:421:01:45

and went on to win the Nobel.

1:01:451:01:47

She says two things matter to her,

1:01:491:01:52

being a writer, and a mother.

1:01:521:01:54

She's always been both.

1:01:541:01:55

Yeah, that's the picture.

1:02:021:02:04

Sadly, her second son, Slade, died five years ago of cancer.

1:02:041:02:10

She lives surrounded by his paintings, and his picture.

1:02:131:02:18

"'They will blow it', she thought.

1:02:241:02:27

"'Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrows.

1:02:271:02:32

"'What waste.'

1:02:341:02:35

"She knew from personal experience how hard loving was,

1:02:361:02:42

"how selfish and how easily sundered.

1:02:421:02:46

"Withholding sex, or relying on it,

1:02:461:02:50

"ignoring children or devouring them.

1:02:501:02:54

"'I was pretty once,' she thought, 'real pretty.'

1:02:561:03:00

"'And I believed it was enough.'

1:03:001:03:03

"And now she lived alone in the wilderness,

1:03:061:03:10

"knitting and tatting away,

1:03:101:03:12

"grateful that at last

1:03:121:03:15

"Sweet Jesus had given her a forgetfulness blanket,

1:03:151:03:20

"along with a little pillow of wisdom

1:03:201:03:25

"to comfort her in old age."

1:03:251:03:28

I like her.

1:03:311:03:33

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