Truth She Wrote — A Found Poem and Collected Thoughts on Toni Morrison

Barbadian writers share their thoughts and feelings on Toni Morrison. ArtsEtc lands the found poem "Truth She Wrote" in the process. Read on or click the writers' images below...

I READ The Bluest Eye and cried through it. I got deeply engrossed [in Beloved] and jumped out of my skin when I realized the character was a ghost. I never finished it. [Toni Morrison] dealt with the topics of slavery and racism like a surgeon with a scalpel and no anesthetic. This reader couldn't deal with it. —Zoanne Evans, literary/literacy activist

…

TONI MORRISON has always shown me what's possible for women writers of colour, both with her use of language and her fearless way of being. It's hard to pick one book. I read The Bluest Eye as a teenager, and it encapsulated issues around identity and ethnicity that continue to be part of my own writing path. —Sharon Hurley Hall, author of Exploring Shadeism

…

I DON'T want to write a tribute for Toni Morrison. That would be an acknowledgement of her death. And she's not dead. She lives in her words. My favourite book? The Bluest Eye. Because although I've never set foot in the continental US, I recognize the story well. It is universal. —Nailah Imoja, author, educator

…

I HOPE people suss out the appeal for forgiveness in Toni Morrison’s novels. —Margaret D. Gill, poet, author and tutor

…

MORRISON MADE it OK to be a Black writer writing about people who looked like us…. She wrote primarily for a Black audience, without any apology, holding up a mirror so we truly saw ourselves. For a people whose histories have been erased and were treated as invisible, being seen on her pages unleashed our power. —Sharma Taylor, winner of the 2019 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize

…

ONE OF my favourite Morrison quotes from her 1993 Nobel lecture: "...we do language. That may be the measure of our lives." —Esther Phillips, Poet Laureate of Barbados

…

I WAS three years old when The Bluest Eye was published, but thirty before I could read it. There was everything in my childhood that would draw me to Toni Morrison’s work, yet I was hesitant. There was a truth she wrote that my lily-white upbringing didn’t want my black skin to know. —Daria Cave, educator, author of The Remarkable Ones

…

MORRISON WILL forever be an icon when it comes to articulating and capturing creatively the black experience, and for her I will always be grateful. Her work Song of Solomon keeps me as I move through life; “if you surrender to the air, you could ride it.” —Racquel Griffith, poet, reviewer, former Irving Burgie Award winner.

...

BELOVED IS the book I'd dash back into a burning house to rescue. The Bluest Eye would remain on the shelf—it is ingrained on my consciousness. Every time I talk to a little black girl who cannot see or celebrate her beauty, that book is with me. —Linda M. Deane, ArtsEtc