My Debt To A Great Writer

As a lifelong avid reader, many authors have given me the gift of their words. But the impact of Toni Morrison's words on me as a reader and thinker place her in a different category than most of those other authors.

Since Morrison's death two days ago, I've been reflecting on the debt I owe to her singular talent. Had I not read Song of Solomon (1977) - my first exposure to Morrison - it's unlikely I'd have soon after returned to the coruscating essays and painful novels of James Baldwin. If I'd not then gone back and read Morrison's first two novels - The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1974), my later appreciation for her masterwork - Beloved (1987) - would probably not have been as nuanced.

Throughout the 80's and into the 90's, Morrison's transformative novels and provocative essays informed my growing awareness of white privilege and the corrosive legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, as well as helping me understand how great writing can help shape an open mind. My favorite Morrison book, Tar Baby (1981), though one of her lesser-known, remains to this day the novel about race I'm most inclined to recommend to seekers. And, had I never read that, or Playing In The Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992) or, most recently, God Help the Child (2015), other challenging but worthwhile books about the African-American experience by authors like Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Marlon James could have easily bypassed, enraged, or confused me.

I can never re-pay the debt I owe to the extraordinary Toni Morrison. To which author do you owe a similar debt?

 https://reflectionsfromthebellcurve.blogspot.com/2012/05/attention-sports-fans.html