I can think of few moments that have sent my jaw, totally involuntarily, to the floor like finding out Toni Morrison had passed. Yesterday. A whole day and the world didn’t know, I didn’t know. My throat got tight, and it’s tight now.
I think that when onlookers think about her impact, they look at her unstoppable crusade to put black women and their stories on published, sellable pages. Before Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was telling us to be wary of single stories in her Ted Talk there was Ms. Morrison doing it in 1970, making our hearts break over Pecola Breedlove and the small bit of her insanity we knew we’d already found in ourselves.
That’s important, wildly and completely important. But what always struck me was how her language lofted and carried until it hit you, hard, and you felt it in a place that maybe you hadn’t found yet.
I can remember the first time I read The Bluest Eye, my mom’s copy from when she was young, and being amazed just by the force of the language. I would read passages out loud to my mom in the kitchen hoping that just hearing the same letters strung together would get to her like it got to me. I’ve only ever wanted to write in such a nuanced yet clear way. Nuanced in implication but always clear to the heart of any person who read my words.
I took a Toni Morrison class the spring semester of my Junior year where we read her entire canon. With each word, the same revelation I found in my first Morrison encounter grabbed hold of me again. But this time, it felt like she was reaching out through the page and holding on to me, not endearingly, but jolting me to attention – maybe even reprimanding me for my ignorance - about the truths in my own life.
The truest of all I found in the final sentence of Song of Solomon: “For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” What a word and a truth for anyone’s life but especially mine, someone endlessly trying to surrender and ride as best I can. Who didn’t even know I was trying, or that it was try worth trying, until Ms. Morrison plucked the words right out of my heart and put them on the page.