Monday June 5, 2023; 10:39 AM EDT
- "She pieced together neglected stories with an eye toward what history ignored, and gave them space to breathe." --@ReetaMac on Toni Morrison#
- In an Atlantic article on a recent Princeton exhibit on the writing of Toni Morrison, Syreeta McFadden describes the emotion work that follows the historical research. Risking much, Morrison immersed herself in the emotional life of people at their moments of most extreme choices and gravest stakes.#
- I don't know whether to be happy or sad that the video from the exhibit is not easy to find online. It's a decades-old interview that begins with a seemingly endless prologue by the academic fellow named Sigmund Koch who is meant to spark the conversation. There in the quiet of the exhibit hall I found myself saying aloud, impatiently, "Stop talking!"#
- In looking around for that interview with Morrison, I notice that she was not shy in later years about explaining to interviewers the racism inherent in some of their questions. #
- "You can't understand how powerfully racist that question is, can you?"#
- In this she breaks what many white folks like myself have grown up thinking was the deal America offers us: Not having to risk being around someone who would point out the veneer of naiveté that cloaks the knowledge of our own privilege.#
- Also very interesting to me is a comment she makes about why black music is often so rich. She suggests that many of these artists have not acted as though white folks are looking in, looking over their shoulders, and have instead created for their own community, the people they know best. An immediacy becomes possible, and a depth, and a fine grain of experience and insight. A caring.#
- Then I suppose some Pat Boone sort of person comes along and records a cover version, draining all the edgy energy away, as if faithfully or even sweetly reproducing a run of notes from a sheet of music is the same as art. As if we can be moved and challenged and healed by faithful reproduction of a mere reminder of the full and real thing, which is all that sheet music is.#
- And that idea at the top of this posting about giving stories space to breathe: I suppose that's one way to help nudge ourselves past the interpretive ideas we always have at hand, which save us the work of being open to the experience of the book. The authors slows things down, brings us up close so we can see the grain of the experience, the sweat of the encounter. We can hear a person's breathing change the moment the stakes are doubled for someone they care about.#