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sheshe2

(88,091 posts) Tue Aug 6, 2019, 04:14 PM Aug 2019

Toni Morrison. A President. Her Words

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Toni Morrison

“I decided that ... winning the (Nobel) prize was fabulous,” Morrison added. “Nobody was going to take that and make it into something else. I felt representational. I felt American. I felt Ohioan. I felt blacker than ever. I felt more woman than ever. I felt all of that, and put all of that together and went out and had a good time.”

Like Faulkner, her characters are burdened by the legacy, and ongoing tragedy, of slavery and separation. For Faulkner’s white Southerners, losers of the Civil War, the price is guilt, rage and madness; for Morrison’s slaves and their descendants, supposedly liberated, history follows like the most unrelenting posse.

“The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind,” Morrison wrote in “Beloved,” in which the ghost of the slain daughter returns to haunt and obsess her mother.

“And if it didn’t stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. Slave life; freed life — every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem.”

In November 2016, she wrote a highly cited New York essay about the election of Donald Trump, calling his ascension to the presidency a mark of what whites would settle for to hold on to their status.

“So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble,” she wrote.

1931-2019

https://apnews.com/11910324b8c848af823a4b19a3e1bc7e?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP

I cried this morning, hearing that she had died. She was a special gift bestowed on us. Her words will be with us forever. She was Beloved.

Rest in Peace Toni.

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Toni Morrison. A President. Her Words (Original Post) sheshe2 Aug 2019 OP

... brer cat Aug 2019 #1

That last paragraph is exquisite in its beauty Botany Aug 2019 #2

Amen. Kind of Blue Aug 2019 #3

brer cat

(26,469 posts)

1. ...

Reply to sheshe2 (Original post)

Tue Aug 6, 2019, 04:28 PM

Aug 2019

Botany

(72,644 posts)

2. That last paragraph is exquisite in its beauty

Reply to sheshe2 (Original post)

Tue Aug 6, 2019, 04:37 PM

Aug 2019

"So scary are the consequences of ... with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble."

Kind of Blue

(8,709 posts)

3. Amen.

Reply to sheshe2 (Original post)

Tue Aug 6, 2019, 05:30 PM

Aug 2019

I was really disheartened this morning, too, and started remembering what she left; her words, language to speak concisely and elegantly of what we have no speedy remedy for. And there it is in what she put in a nutshell, our life here and globally for PoC, "are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked..."

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