I minored in English & American Literature in college, which meant there was an ishload of reading to be done (I took an entire course on August Wilson’s plays). Among the books I fell in love with was Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye. It’s a story I wish I could have told, the type of story I would write. Young, Black Pecola Breedlove wants blond hair and blue eyes (the bluest eyes) ’cause she thinks it’ll make her pretty. Not just that. Possessing these physical qualities associated with beauty, she thinks, will erase all the mental and emotional ugliness she’s seen. It’s about identity and the things that make you wish to change yours, the things people say and do that stay with you. The people that make you question your own self and the power in all that. The writing is incredible. I’d like to get to a place like that.
This is the excerpt from Amazon that describes Pecola’s family:
“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question…. And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.”
Point is, New York Magazine informed me today that in November Toni Morrison is coming out with her ninth novel. A Mercy. A story about slavery that doesn’t focus on the race issue. Or rather, chooses not to see it as an issue. And I was just wondering if that’s possible. like if that’s just talking about the situation while avoiding the conversation. Ms. Morrison is one of those authors who brings incredible perspective to complex issues. But, with this, she says:
“I really wanted to get to a place before slavery was equated with race. Whether they were black or white was less important than what they owned and what their power was.”
I’d like to agree with this possession-over-race theory…but obviously it’s not so cut and dry. I remember a discussion in one of my English classes. We wondered, if it just so happened that Black people were the ones with power and Whites ended up as slaves, would everything as it is now be reversed? Were the color lines drawn out of pure greed and desire for ownership? Either way, I’m intrigued. I’ll be reading. What Toni says at the end of the NY Mag article is great:
Yet none of this is to say that Morrison thinks race has run its course as an American topic (even if Obama wins). “Crude and crass as most of it is and, really, uninformed as almost all of it is, the discourse about race is important,” she says. “But the real conversation should take place among white people. They should talk to each other about that. Not with me. I can’t be the doctor and the patient.”
