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The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom
By Toni Morrison. 2019
At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury…
of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith.Through bricolage--a construction or creation from a diverse range of available things--this brief book aims to limn the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision and achievement. It dramatizes the life of her powerful mind by juxtaposing quotations, one to a page, drawn from her entire body of work, both fiction and non-fiction--from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard.Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation--stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity--addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and authority.Toni Morrison: Great American Writer
By Lisa Renee Rhodes. 2001
The Toni Morrison Book Club
By Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Casssandra Jackson, Piper Kendrix Williams. 2020
In this startling group memoir, four friends—black and white, gay and straight, immigrant and American-born—use Toni Morrison’s novels as a…
springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty. Tackling everything from first love and Soul Train to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors take up what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance. Framing their book club around collective secrets, the group bears witness to how Morrison’s works and words can propel us forward while we sit with uncomfortable questions about race, gender, and identity. How do we make space for black vulnerability in the face of white supremacy and internalized self-loathing? How do historical novels speak to us now about the delicate seams that hold black minds and bodies together? This slim and brilliant confessional offers a radical vision for book clubs as sites of self-discovery and communal healing. The Toni Morrison Book Club insists that we find ourselves in fiction and think of Morrison as a spiritual guide to our most difficult thoughts and ideas about American literature and life.Toni Morrison: Nobel Prize-winning Author
By Barbara Kramer. 1996
Speaking Freely: My Life in Publishing and Human Rights
By Toni Morrison, Robert L. Bernstein. 2016
What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Andrei Sakharov, and James Michener have in common? They were all published…
by Bob Bernstein during his twenty-five-year run as president of Random House, before he brought the dissidents Liu Binyan, Jacobo Timerman, Natan Sharansky, and Václav Havel to worldwide attention in his role as the father of modern human rights.Starting as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, Bernstein moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Bennett Cerf as president ten years later. The rest is publishing and human rights history.In a charming and self-effacing work, Bernstein reflects for the first time on his fairy tale publishing career, hobnobbing with Truman Capote and E.L. Doctorow; conspiring with Kay Thompson on the Eloise series; attending a rally for Random House author George McGovern with film star Claudette Colbert; and working with publishing luminaries including Dick Simon, Alfred Knopf, Robert Gottlieb, André Schiffrin, Peter Osnos, Susan Peterson, and Jason Epstein as Bernstein grew Random House from a $40 million to an $800 million-plus "money making juggernaut," as Thomas Maier called it in his biography of Random House owner Si Newhouse. In a book sure to be savored by anyone who has worked in the publishing industry, fought for human rights, or wondered how Theodor Geisel became Dr. Seuss, Speaking Freely beautifully captures a bygone era in the book industry and the first crucial years of a worldwide movement to protect free speech and challenge tyranny around the globe.Toni Morrison: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series)
By Melville House. 2020
&“Knowledge is what&’s important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.&” — TONI MORRISON In this…
wide-ranging collection of thought-provoking interviews — including her first and last — Toni Morrison (whom President Barrack Obama called a &“national treasure&”) details not only her writing life, but also her other careers as a teacher, and as a publisher, as well as the gripping story of her family. In fact, Morrison reveals here that her Nobel Prize-winning novels, such as Beloved and Song of Solomon, were born out of her family&’s stories — such as those of her great-grandmother, born a slave, or her father, escaping the lynch mobs of the South. With an introduction by her close friend, poet Nikki Giovani, Morrison hereby weaves yet another fascinating and inspiring narrative — that of herself.Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison
By A. J. Verdelle. 1989
“Passionate, personal, insightful, testy, and unique.” —Kirkus (starred review)"Verdelle offers us testimony in praise and consideration of life as a…
literary citizen and Black woman alongside the guiding light of Toni Morrison. This is a holy testimony, indeed, one that deserves to be amen'd forever.” —Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author"Verdelle gives us the greatest gift—our beloved ancestor returned to us—generous and alive, remembered and revered. So grateful for this book in the world.” —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn"If you let a black girl loose in a library, you may not recognize the woman who emerges."—from Miss ChloeToni Morrison, born Chloe A Wofford, was a towering figure in the world of literature when she entered A.J. Verdelle’s life. Their literary friendship was a young writer’s dream—simultaneously exhilarating, intimidating, fulfilling, and challenging. The relationship crossed generations, spanned several cycles in life, exhibited high and low notes, reached and dipped and found its way. Like many women friends, these two writers imagined and built a relationship that was responsive, inventive, and engaged.Miss Chloe powerfully situates the risks writers face and the freedom they find when they put Black women’s lives into words. Verdelle chronicles her grief at Morrison’s passing, and finds comfort in Morrison’s astute advice—wisdom Verdelle didn’t always recognize at the time. In this pensive and intricately lyrical book, Verdelle honors Morrison among the cultural greats, while illuminating and celebrating the power of language, legacy, and genius.A. J. Verdelle is the award-winning author of the novel, The Good Negress. She teaches Creative Writing at Morgan State University and at the MFA program at Lesley University.