Speaker 1: He says at one point in that lecture, language can
Speaker 1: only art towards the place where meaning may lie, and
Speaker 1: it ends on a note of hope for what can
Speaker 1: happen when you stop marginalizing the other, when you stop
Speaker 1: seeing the person totally as only different from you, but
Speaker 1: not connected to your humanity? That was Dr Marilyn Mobley
Speaker 1: talking about Tony Morrison and the lecture she gave when
Speaker 1: she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison was the
Speaker 1: first African American woman to win that prize, and The
Speaker 1: New York Times called her the towering novelist of the
Speaker 1: Black experience. I'm a land Ververe and this is senecas
Speaker 1: one d women to hear. We are bringing you one
Speaker 1: hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women
Speaker 1: you need to hear. You may have encountered Tony Morrison's
Speaker 1: books on the bestseller lists, or in a college class,
Speaker 1: or through Oprah's Book Club. Among her best known works
Speaker 1: are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Doctor.
Speaker 1: Marilyn Mowbley knows Morrison's books well. She is a former
Speaker 1: president of the Tony Morrison Society and Professor Emerita of
Speaker 1: English and African American Studies at Case Western Reserve University.
Speaker 1: Listen and learn from doctor Marilyn Mowbley why Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: is one of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear. We
Speaker 1: are speaking today with doctor Marilyn Mobley about the great,
Speaker 1: great writer Tony Morrison. Welcome, doctor Mobley. Thank you, it's
Speaker 1: good to be here. It is such a pleasure to
Speaker 1: have you with us. I know that you've done much
Speaker 1: work as studying Tony Morrison, who was an acclaimed writer
Speaker 1: and editor, and among her many honors, she was awarded
Speaker 1: the Novel Prize for Literature for books like Beloved, The
Speaker 1: Bluest Eyes, Song of Solomon, and so many more. In
Speaker 1: your view, what was her singular achievement and what should
Speaker 1: she be remembered for. I thank you for that question.
Speaker 1: I always wonder about the words singular when I think
Speaker 1: about Tony Morrison. She always seemed larger than life to me.
Speaker 1: But for I think she should be known for being
Speaker 1: a phenomenal writer who made space for two things at once,
Speaker 1: unapologetically affirming the humanity of black people, especially black women,
Speaker 1: and of critiquing the racial imaginary and its effect on
Speaker 1: the well being of this nation. I think she just
Speaker 1: did such a wonderful job of holding both of those
Speaker 1: things in place, unapologetically affirming the humanity of black people
Speaker 1: and routine mainly critiquing how race and racism operated in
Speaker 1: this country, and she did it better than some. I
Speaker 1: think she'll also be remembered for being able to talk
Speaker 1: about these issues with language, narrative, an eloquence that had
Speaker 1: a kind of piercing clarity about them. She was able
Speaker 1: to talk about unspeakable things unspoken, as she called them,
Speaker 1: and other people may have tried, but she was able
Speaker 1: to get our attention in ways that other people could not.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned the word humanity, and I guess what
Speaker 1: I would add to that is complexity, because it seems
Speaker 1: to me, before Tony Morrison, some of the representations of
Speaker 1: black people were simplistic and lacking in depth. But after
Speaker 1: she began writing, many of us felt the complexity that
Speaker 1: we know to be part of our community suddenly came
Speaker 1: to life on the page, and everybody had to take note. Yea,
Speaker 1: she not only moved despite the way she wrote in
Speaker 1: her work, but she's certainly broadened our depth in the
Speaker 1: way that you just said, depth of understanding Now, you
Speaker 1: mentioned that she brought us in many ways the black
Speaker 1: experience in America through her writing, usually obviously from a
Speaker 1: female perspective. So how did being a woman inform her
Speaker 1: writing or perhaps make a special in some way? I
Speaker 1: really liked that question because I believe she recognized how
Speaker 1: in the works of other people, black women were often
Speaker 1: marginalized or dismissed or minor characters, and in her writing,
Speaker 1: black women became center. We were able to see ourselves
Speaker 1: in writing at the center of the story instead of
Speaker 1: as add on or as minor characters, as marginal characters.
Speaker 1: And even when she wrote and had male characters at
Speaker 1: the center, such as The Song of Solomon, the protagonists
Speaker 1: in that book, Milkman did is a as a man.
Speaker 1: And in one of her later novels, in the novel Home,
Speaker 1: the character Money is at the center. But even in
Speaker 1: those novels where men have more of a central role,
Speaker 1: which was different from most of her works, she still
Speaker 1: had women being critical to their lives and showing the
Speaker 1: importance of women even in the character and even in
Speaker 1: the lives of men. And I just think for many
Speaker 1: women readers that was important to understand that we've were
Speaker 1: the center of our narratives, not always the center of somebody,
Speaker 1: not always the margin of someone else's narrative. And that
Speaker 1: was really important for her, and it was really important
Speaker 1: for her readers, and many of the critics talked about that.
Speaker 1: Often in my classes, I was teaching her by herself.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I was taching her in a course for women writers.
Speaker 1: Often I taught her of course and a um and
Speaker 1: of course that was African American literature, American literature. But
Speaker 1: there was nothing like teaching, and of course that was
Speaker 1: for women writers, so that women could see how this
Speaker 1: woman writer treated our stories and our lives. So interesting.
Speaker 1: What was it that that drew you to her writing,
Speaker 1: because you obviously can speak about her with great depth
Speaker 1: of understanding, Well, I will, I will say the first
Speaker 1: thing that attracted me to her it's probably not very
Speaker 1: literary at all, but it's the fact that she was
Speaker 1: from Ohio. She was an Ohio writer, from Lorraine, Ohio,
Speaker 1: not far from my hometown of Akron, Ohio. And when
Speaker 1: I read The Bluest Eye and saw the name of
Speaker 1: my city in the novel, I said, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a wonderful writer. All things are local, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So I must admit, you know, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: shameless admission that I was attracted to the fact that
Speaker 1: she was an Ohio writer and a black woman writer
Speaker 1: writing about small town life in one sense, and also
Speaker 1: writing about what it was like to be a black
Speaker 1: girl in America. I was just totally attracted to that.
Speaker 1: And even though she was talking about poverty, and I
Speaker 1: didn't grow up poor and she didn't grow up poor,
Speaker 1: we knew poor people in our community. And that's partly
Speaker 1: what she's doing in that novel is saying there are
Speaker 1: people who are often other who are other demonized, sometimes stigmatized,
Speaker 1: and sometimes scapegoating. It was looking at the ways in
Speaker 1: which people in a community could scapegoat. And even as
Speaker 1: a college student when I read that, I remember thinking, yes,
Speaker 1: I saw people scapegoated in my community, and she's really
Speaker 1: capturing how that works. But I know, if I'm honest,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be this, I was first attracted
Speaker 1: to oh acrone Is in her novel Okay, well then
Speaker 1: this is a good writer. Well you know, whatever it takes,
Speaker 1: and look how it's propelled you into being a extraordinary
Speaker 1: expert on Tony Morrison. Today was the Bluest Guy the
Speaker 1: first of her novels that you read. It was the
Speaker 1: first that I read. And I also was attracted in
Speaker 1: The Bluest Eye to how she made education front and center.
Speaker 1: My UH degree at Bernard was in English and education,
Speaker 1: and so I was already interested in literature anyway. I
Speaker 1: just have always been a bookworm. Actually, so Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: would probably say the same thing about herself. I was
Speaker 1: intrigued with how it talked about education and those Dick
Speaker 1: and James primers that we all well, I don't know
Speaker 1: now that's the case, but many of us were introduced
Speaker 1: to literacy through that primer. Like Tony Morrison, I went
Speaker 1: away to kindergarten knowing how to read and write. And
Speaker 1: in a couple of her interviews, she talked about that,
Speaker 1: coming to kindergarten knowing how to read and write, and
Speaker 1: I did as well. I like the way The Bluest Eye, however,
Speaker 1: problematized that and and said there are images that you
Speaker 1: get as early as kindergarten that deny your humanity, that
Speaker 1: makes you feel less than if you're a black girl.
Speaker 1: And I just thought it was so important. I quickly
Speaker 1: caught the bug, and so as soon as Sula came out.
Speaker 1: I read Sula because Sula was about female friendship, and
Speaker 1: many women can relate to this. Sometimes it happens in
Speaker 1: high school, sometimes it happens in college. But Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: captured that phenomenon of women starting out the gate as
Speaker 1: very close friends and then going separate ways, sometimes because
Speaker 1: one goes to college and one does not, as it
Speaker 1: happened in that novel, one gets married and one does not.
Speaker 1: One makes life toy is that are so different, and
Speaker 1: then the friendship gets free or intense in a way
Speaker 1: that it never had been before. And I just think
Speaker 1: she captured that so well. I was. I was really
Speaker 1: drawn to that novel for what it said. I had
Speaker 1: seen it in my own life of having friendships, and
Speaker 1: once I went away to school, people weren't sure what
Speaker 1: would happen to the friendship, and Morrison just interrogated that
Speaker 1: with with laser focus. Now. I know she died in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen, but if she had lived, she'd
Speaker 1: be nine this month. Tell us about her childhood and
Speaker 1: her young adulthood. You already told us she grew up
Speaker 1: in Lorain, Ohio. But what was it about her growing
Speaker 1: up that turned her into a writer. I think that's
Speaker 1: a wonderful question, because I don't know that she always
Speaker 1: knew she was a writer. But when I look back
Speaker 1: on what I learned about her life from my own
Speaker 1: reading and even in documentary on her called The Pieces
Speaker 1: I Am, which came out the same year of her death,
Speaker 1: there was lots of father There was lots of evidence
Speaker 1: that she would become a writer. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of storytelling in her home, her mother saying in the
Speaker 1: church choir and was always at home singing. When she
Speaker 1: was a teenager, she worked at the local library, and
Speaker 1: she uh finally used to tell that she didn't she
Speaker 1: didn't really do her job so well because she they
Speaker 1: would catch her reading all the time. She was supposed
Speaker 1: to be shelving books, and she was reading. And so
Speaker 1: I would say, as an English professor, for me, that
Speaker 1: was she was getting prepared. She was getting prepared to
Speaker 1: write by being immersed in books, and by being immersed
Speaker 1: in the storytelling tradition she heard in her home, and
Speaker 1: the the ear for music that she got from listening
Speaker 1: to her mother sing. And I think all of those
Speaker 1: things prepared her to it ready to write. Even if
Speaker 1: she weren't writing it. We do know that she began
Speaker 1: what became The Bluest Eye when she was a college
Speaker 1: student at Howard University, but it didn't become a novel immediately,
Speaker 1: didn't become a novel until later. And I also think
Speaker 1: the fact that she was part of the Howard Players
Speaker 1: when she was an undergraduate school at Howard University. So
Speaker 1: there's an actress in Tony Morrison, and sometimes you can
Speaker 1: hear that in her audio books. I personally don't like audiobooks,
Speaker 1: but I have listened to her read and there's some
Speaker 1: drama in her reading that says she was attracted to
Speaker 1: language and literature from several angles, from the sound of it,
Speaker 1: from narrative and language, and just for what could happen
Speaker 1: when you brought narrative and language and sound together on
Speaker 1: the page. I think she was intrigued with all of that.
Speaker 1: And she had heard about and witnessed how racism acted
Speaker 1: in this country. Her father there left the South and
Speaker 1: went north because of lynching, and she said she had
Speaker 1: always heard it was racial terrorism, but she had never
Speaker 1: heard what she called the clarifying details actually until she
Speaker 1: went with us in the Tony Morrison Society to her
Speaker 1: father's home in Cartersville, and she heard the historian tell
Speaker 1: the story of how her father, George Wafford, left the South.
Speaker 1: He had heard about another friend who was scheduled to
Speaker 1: be lynch and I always like to tell my students
Speaker 1: that were scheduled must have stuck in his mind that
Speaker 1: it was planned, that was a planned event that people
Speaker 1: took delight in. Um. But in any event, the stories
Speaker 1: of lynching that he had witnessed and heard about made
Speaker 1: her father move north to Lorraine, Ohio. And so I
Speaker 1: think all of this history and family history and national
Speaker 1: history shaped her consciousness. And then her job as an
Speaker 1: editor at Random House gave her an opportunity to be
Speaker 1: on both sides of the publishing world, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So she was helping other people come into
Speaker 1: the spotlight as writers. Claude Brown, for example, she helped
Speaker 1: publish the autobiography of Angela Davis. And I think sitting
Speaker 1: at the table as an editor also developed her own
Speaker 1: ear for writing and for language. And her editor even
Speaker 1: said at one point he had to say to her,
Speaker 1: you need to go ahead and be a writer. And
Speaker 1: it took her a while before she claimed it, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a gender issue that he knew
Speaker 1: she was writing, but she wasn't quite ready to call
Speaker 1: herself a writer. I think a little bit of timidity
Speaker 1: may have been part of it early on, but after
Speaker 1: a while she just fully embraced it. Senecas one hundred
Speaker 1: women to hear will be back after the short break.
Speaker 1: Were there particular challenges that she had to overcome, Well,
Speaker 1: I think I've mentioned a couple of them already. She
Speaker 1: had to balance being a single parent, which I think
Speaker 1: is important because sometimes people don't think of famous people
Speaker 1: having some of the same challenges that other people have.
Speaker 1: So she had a period when she needed her family
Speaker 1: back in Lorraine to help her with with her parenting.
Speaker 1: She had to deal with the challenges of manuscripts being
Speaker 1: rejected at first, even though they had some acclaim, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the acclaim of her third novel, Song of Solomon.
Speaker 1: Those first two novels didn't, and so there was just
Speaker 1: the reality of sometimes you're going to be rejected. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you're gonna realize you're in a male, downnated rural and
Speaker 1: expected to write a certain way, and that's not the
Speaker 1: way you're going to write. And I think she had
Speaker 1: some challenges around that, but after a while some of
Speaker 1: that began to drop away. As I said, she later
Speaker 1: began to embrace herself as a writer and knew that
Speaker 1: that's what she wanted to do, and the editing was
Speaker 1: was less attractive once the writing life really took full
Speaker 1: force in her. Now you knew her personally, um tell
Speaker 1: us what she was like as a person. And I
Speaker 1: also know that you're the founder and former head of
Speaker 1: the Tony Morrison Society, and perhaps you can tell us
Speaker 1: about that as well. Well. I'd like to clarify that
Speaker 1: I'm one of the founders. The actual founder of the
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison Society is Dr Caroline Dennard, who at that
Speaker 1: time was a Georgia State if I'm not mistaken, Georgia
Speaker 1: State University, and we met at the car Prince for
Speaker 1: American Literature, the American Literature Association, and at that conference
Speaker 1: in this was May of Dr Denard came to me
Speaker 1: and she said I was the first person she wanted
Speaker 1: to tell about this idea. She said, I think it's
Speaker 1: time for Tony Morrison to have a society named after her,
Speaker 1: and she would be one of the few living writers
Speaker 1: most of the society's or after writers who are no
Speaker 1: longer living, like Zora Nel Hurston and f Scott Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: and so on. And I agreed with her that it
Speaker 1: was time, and we formed the Tony Morrison Society. I
Speaker 1: think at that time there were about nineteen scholars at
Speaker 1: the conference who said yes, they agreed that it was time,
Speaker 1: and we signed on and we just began working after
Speaker 1: that to post conferences. That was a conference where she
Speaker 1: went with us and went down to Cartersville to her
Speaker 1: father's home, and we began hosting conferences, and she came
Speaker 1: to every single one, including the one we had in Pair,
Speaker 1: and if I'm not mistaken, there have been eight altogether.
Speaker 1: I'm no longer on the board. I'm still a member,
Speaker 1: but I'm not on the board in any event. The
Speaker 1: last one was before she died, which was Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: and her life as an editor. But we had each
Speaker 1: of those biennial conferences scheduled so that she could be present,
Speaker 1: and she was there, and it's at those conferences that
Speaker 1: we had a chance to get to know her a
Speaker 1: little bit better. And so we've had a chance to
Speaker 1: be with her strictly as a writer and as scholars
Speaker 1: we would at our conferences, we would always give out
Speaker 1: a book award. We'd have keynote speakers who were fellow scholars,
Speaker 1: literary scholars, scholars in the field of African American studies,
Speaker 1: and we got to see that side of her, of course,
Speaker 1: the writer, the scholar, the public intellectual. We always got
Speaker 1: to see that. But when we had these conferences, we
Speaker 1: also had downtime with her, and so it was also
Speaker 1: rewarding at that downtime and when we went to her
Speaker 1: home just a top almost as sister friends, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, of course, and there was something very
Speaker 1: nice about talking to her and knowing that, like me,
Speaker 1: I'm also a mother of two sons. We had these
Speaker 1: conversations about what is it like to raise black male children,
Speaker 1: and even back in the eighties, I recall we had
Speaker 1: a conversation, but maybe it was the nineties. We had
Speaker 1: a conversation about what we call the talk that black
Speaker 1: women have with their sons, or that black parents have
Speaker 1: with their sons. And Toni Morrison said she made both
Speaker 1: of her sons put a Fraternal Order Police sticker on
Speaker 1: the back of their cars, and I remember thinking, this
Speaker 1: is this is so important. It felt heavy on one hand,
Speaker 1: and yet it brought in her humanity in a way
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought of it. I hadn't thought of, well,
Speaker 1: like other black women, she has to help her sons
Speaker 1: navigate what America is like racially. I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1: And as soon as she said, I thought, I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell my sons to put a Paternal Order police
Speaker 1: sticker on back of their cars, and so on one end.
Speaker 1: I heard it in a kind of facetious way, and
Speaker 1: yet it was very, very serious, and it said that
Speaker 1: like other black women, regardless of our status or our
Speaker 1: income or education, we had to think about those things.
Speaker 1: And then there was just fun. She was just fun
Speaker 1: to be around. She always had a little something snarkly
Speaker 1: to say, and we would look at one another and
Speaker 1: we would go, WHOA. But I just liked it. You know.
Speaker 1: She wasn't She didn't have herself on a pedestal. And
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it was like to be her
Speaker 1: student at Princeton. I can't imagine that I would get
Speaker 1: any work done for being in awe of her. But
Speaker 1: she was a teacher, and she often talked about how
Speaker 1: she taught and what she wanted her students to accomplish.
Speaker 1: So I just think if we only know her as
Speaker 1: a writer, we're missing out. But if we lean or
Speaker 1: as a writer, that's the most important thing to know.
Speaker 1: Because she tried to capture her own humanity without being autobiographical.
Speaker 1: I think that's important. Sometimes people immediately want to know, well,
Speaker 1: did that happen to her? Did this happen to her? No,
Speaker 1: But she was a keen observer and a keen listener.
Speaker 1: What a privileged time you had with her. You talked
Speaker 1: about her just now about being a teacher, and you
Speaker 1: are a teacher as well in terms of your professorship.
Speaker 1: And you assigned the Nobel lecture that she gave when
Speaker 1: she received the Nobel Prize. You assigned that to your students.
Speaker 1: What is it about the lecture that you want them
Speaker 1: to know? Thank you for asking that question. It is
Speaker 1: known at my university that I taught every single class
Speaker 1: with that lecture. I don't care what the topic of
Speaker 1: the class was. I began every course once I had
Speaker 1: the lecture, once I had the recording with it, because
Speaker 1: I love the way it gave students an appreciation for
Speaker 1: the power of language and the power of narrative. To
Speaker 1: tell difficult truths. And I love the way she took
Speaker 1: a global stage moment. She was at a moment when
Speaker 1: she could have talked about anything, and in that lecture
Speaker 1: she actually talks about many of the issues that I teach.
Speaker 1: Talks about what it's like to have an encounter with
Speaker 1: someone who is different from you. The young men and
Speaker 1: that narrative have an encounter with an older I say
Speaker 1: young men. They were young people. I don't know what
Speaker 1: their gender now I think about it, but they had
Speaker 1: an encounter with an old, blind black woman. And it
Speaker 1: starts as a kind of standoff, a kind of narrative standoff,
Speaker 1: and by the end of that novel, they have come together.
Speaker 1: They've become uh almost friends, but they at least have
Speaker 1: a sense of appreciation for the other. And the way
Speaker 1: she uses that noble lecture to age that and to
Speaker 1: load it. It's a lecture that's loaded up with ideas
Speaker 1: about how we other, how we marginalize, how racism acts,
Speaker 1: how sexism acts, how fascism acts. She gets so much
Speaker 1: of the political and cultural reality of our lived lives
Speaker 1: in that short narrative called the Nobile Lecture, that I
Speaker 1: want my students to hear it because she says at
Speaker 1: one point in that lecture, language can only art towards
Speaker 1: the place where meaning may lie. And that tells you
Speaker 1: the power of language right there. It says you're not
Speaker 1: always going to get it right, but it also says
Speaker 1: that language can be for good or for evil, And
Speaker 1: in that moment, in that lecture, she takes you all
Speaker 1: those places, and it ends on a note of hope
Speaker 1: for what can happen when you stop marginalizing the other,
Speaker 1: when you stop seeing the person totally as only different
Speaker 1: from you but not connected to your humanity. That novel
Speaker 1: ends on a note of hope for what language can
Speaker 1: do to connect, to create community, to create a sense
Speaker 1: of belonging. So they start as a standoff, but they
Speaker 1: end finally realizing that the The lecture ends with, look
Speaker 1: at this thing we have done together, And I just
Speaker 1: think that is so beautiful, It's so delicious. My students
Speaker 1: used to look at me, I'm sure, and wonder what
Speaker 1: in the world is happening to her? But I just
Speaker 1: needed them to know that that whole lecture shows the
Speaker 1: power of language. People can start at a standoff, they
Speaker 1: can start as antagonists, but if they surrender to language,
Speaker 1: and if they surrender to the power of the imagination,
Speaker 1: and they surrender to the ability to see one another
Speaker 1: as community and interconnected and belonging, then there's a way
Speaker 1: that language can help us. Well. I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: a student in your class listening to the fabulous lecture
Speaker 1: you just gave about Tony Morrison's Nobel lecture. What a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful lesson. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Now, if
Speaker 1: you could read just one of her books again, what
Speaker 1: would it be? And why, Oh my goodness, She's written
Speaker 1: eleven novels, and this question always comes to me, and
Speaker 1: it used to stump me. It doesn't stomp me anymore.
Speaker 1: It's now beloved, beloved, beloved, and I and the and
Speaker 1: the novel only had one title, beloved. But I say
Speaker 1: beloved because even though it's a hard book, and many
Speaker 1: people tell me, I just did a book discussion for
Speaker 1: the emeriti professors at my university last week, and many
Speaker 1: of them said it's too difficult, they put it down
Speaker 1: they started it. But I love it despite how differ
Speaker 1: quote it is, because it such a beautiful, eloquent, powerful
Speaker 1: statement about the institution of slavery. And I always tell
Speaker 1: my students the word is enslavement, because it helps you
Speaker 1: understand something happened to somebody. To simply call it slavery
Speaker 1: sound like it always existed. And while slavery is an
Speaker 1: old institution, even before it happened on American soil, I
Speaker 1: want them to know what enslavement meant. And I love
Speaker 1: the way Tony Morrison begins to take us into the
Speaker 1: interior lives of the enslaved people. She takes us into
Speaker 1: the interior life of a black woman, and for me
Speaker 1: that was important. You can't talk about American history without
Speaker 1: talking about the institution of slavery. And for a book
Speaker 1: to do something different from what Frederick Douglas did or
Speaker 1: any of the other Equiana or any other slave narratives,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a way, or at least they didn't
Speaker 1: succeed at showing you what is it like for a
Speaker 1: woman it when your body is the site of production
Speaker 1: and reproduction, your body is the site of rape, and
Speaker 1: when you've endured in dignities of not even being able
Speaker 1: to marry your husband, but to have control over your
Speaker 1: life surrender to the slave master, how it feels to
Speaker 1: live under those conditions and so Morrison took us away
Speaker 1: from that linear historical account that we got in the
Speaker 1: slave narratives, which were very important narratives. I don't discount
Speaker 1: them at all, nor would she. But when she read them,
Speaker 1: she said, there was a way they left something out,
Speaker 1: and there is a way that Beloved gets it as
Speaker 1: hard a novel as it is. And then, in addition
Speaker 1: to being a professor, I'm also a preacher and as
Speaker 1: a minister, I love the way in the middle of Beloved,
Speaker 1: there's this character, Baby says, who's a preacher who takes
Speaker 1: the enslaved community to the clearing, as it's called in
Speaker 1: the novel. In black history there are places known as
Speaker 1: hush harbors. And to see how eloquently Tony Morrison put
Speaker 1: that in the middle of that novel novel that is
Speaker 1: so hard, that is so difficult to wrap your mind
Speaker 1: and heart around, but to have a place where she
Speaker 1: brings the community together and she says, okay, we're here
Speaker 1: in the clearing. Here, I want you to love your hands,
Speaker 1: I want you to love your mouth, I want you
Speaker 1: to love your neck, and I want you to love
Speaker 1: your heart. And that whole scene that it's a beautiful sermon.
Speaker 1: Number one, but that whole scene is an example of
Speaker 1: how Tony Morrison wanted to humanize a whole community of
Speaker 1: people who had been dehumanized, mistreated, scandalized, miseducated, and so on.
Speaker 1: She did something beautiful in that scene that I will
Speaker 1: never forget, and so the ways in which it treated masculinity.
Speaker 1: Paul d comes back and reconnects with her as a friend.
Speaker 1: They talk about the plantation as sweet home. It wasn't
Speaker 1: sweet and it wasn't home. And so there are ways
Speaker 1: that that novel connects with issues that are in all
Speaker 1: the other novels. But it takes it to this very
Speaker 1: fundamental truth about American history that we want to deny.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now in our country people are so
Speaker 1: divided on do we talk about slavery? Do we talk
Speaker 1: about sixteen nineteen? Do we tell the truth about it?
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison has often said there are things you can
Speaker 1: do in fiction that you can't do anywhere else, and
Speaker 1: so I think that's why I love the novel. It
Speaker 1: just treats this very difficult topic. And I will confess
Speaker 1: it took me a few times before I could read
Speaker 1: it all the way through. But once I've read it
Speaker 1: all the way through. I loved it. And I also
Speaker 1: loved that the daughter in that novel saves her mother
Speaker 1: when her mother is almost about when Setha is almost
Speaker 1: about to lose her life, she's so consumed with the
Speaker 1: haunting and the return of the baby she killed in
Speaker 1: the form of a ghost and so on. Denver, the
Speaker 1: daughter realizes she's got to go to the very community
Speaker 1: that it's forned her mother and say to them, I
Speaker 1: need you to come help my mother. My mother is
Speaker 1: about to die if somebody doesn't come help me. And
Speaker 1: so it's a beautiful scene of community again. And Morrison
Speaker 1: is always interested in the community of women and the
Speaker 1: role they play in our survival. She never discounts men,
Speaker 1: and some people sometimes feel that when a woman counts
Speaker 1: focuses on women. But she wants to say there's a
Speaker 1: special role that women play, and there's a special role
Speaker 1: that community plays, and Beloved illustrates that that element of
Speaker 1: community and the community of women and the healing community
Speaker 1: of women, especially in the sense of storytelling, shows up
Speaker 1: in all of her novels, but in Beloved it has
Speaker 1: a special function because the very group of women who
Speaker 1: had looked own onset that who had in a sense
Speaker 1: stigmatized her, come to embrace her and participate in saving her.
Speaker 1: And I just think it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful novel. Well, you've certainly given us great insight into beloved.
Speaker 1: I felt like I'm in lip glass. It's just terrific. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we're coming to the end of our conversation, which is
Speaker 1: always a sad moment, especially when it's been as exciting
Speaker 1: and stimulating as this one. You know, you've given us
Speaker 1: so much inspiration of Tony Morrison as she conveys it
Speaker 1: in her work. These are tough times. I think by
Speaker 1: any definition, I wonder if you could give us a
Speaker 1: message of hope from her afford today and for the future.
Speaker 1: I think Tony Morrison would be skeptical of the notion
Speaker 1: of hope. It is natural, I think, to want to
Speaker 1: end on a note of hope. And I think in
Speaker 1: one of her say it's called Home, she talks about
Speaker 1: a notion of home as a place where there is
Speaker 1: a sense of belonging that is both snug and wide open.
Speaker 1: And I just found that such a powerful phrase that
Speaker 1: I began using it at my university when I not
Speaker 1: only was an English professor, but also I was chief
Speaker 1: Diversity Officer, and I think Morrison wanted us to always
Speaker 1: think of if hope existed, it was in the form
Speaker 1: of what home could be. And if home could be
Speaker 1: both snug and wide open, then there was hope for
Speaker 1: us as long as there are people struggling for home
Speaker 1: to be snug, which means you have a sense of belonging,
Speaker 1: like it is a place for you, and it could
Speaker 1: be wide open your imagination. As she says in Beloved,
Speaker 1: the only grace you could have is the grace you
Speaker 1: could imagine. I think Tony Morrison always wanted us to
Speaker 1: think of home as a place that wherever it was
Speaker 1: a space that was both snug and wide open, where
Speaker 1: you could have a sense that you belonged and you
Speaker 1: could reach your full potential. I think she was always
Speaker 1: writing with the hope that a community that had been
Speaker 1: demonized would know that the future was, as the end
Speaker 1: of that lecture says, in our hands. But it's in
Speaker 1: all of our hands, not solely the hands of black people.
Speaker 1: It's also in the hands of white people. Will we
Speaker 1: reach out to one another to create that idea of
Speaker 1: home wherever we reside, being both snug and wide open.
Speaker 1: I think she had some hope. She was very depressed.
Speaker 1: I think often about how we were living out this
Speaker 1: thing we called democracy. But I think in that essay Home,
Speaker 1: she was expressing the only hope she had as a writer,
Speaker 1: and that is that there would be what the imagination
Speaker 1: could do and what she could do in literature. But
Speaker 1: it was also a hope for us that we would
Speaker 1: get to that space of snug and wide open. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for this wonderful conversation, for the insights
Speaker 1: into Tony Morrison's writings that you so eloquently conveyed. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Dr Marilyn Mobley, scholar and friend of
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison. Thank you, thank you for having me. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. How fortunate we are to have Dr Mobley
Speaker 1: give us those insights into the remarkable Tony Morrison. There
Speaker 1: are three things I took from that conversation. First, at
Speaker 1: Seneca Women we often talk about the importance of amplifying
Speaker 1: women's voices. Tony Morrison gave voices to Black women who
Speaker 1: had gone unheard for generations. As Dr Mobley said, Tony
Speaker 1: Morrison spoke about what was unspoken. She painted full complex
Speaker 1: pictures of people who had been stereotyped and marginalized. Second,
Speaker 1: in books like Sula, Morrison reminds us of the richness
Speaker 1: and intensity of female friendship and how our friendships influence
Speaker 1: us throughout our lives. Finally, Tony Morrison gives us a
Speaker 1: unique perspective on the concept of home. Our home, says
Speaker 1: Doctor Mobley, is a place of both imagination and snugness.
Speaker 1: It's where we belong and the place where we can
Speaker 1: reach our highest potential. Tune in next week to hear
Speaker 1: about our next featured woman and discover why she's one
Speaker 1: of Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred
Speaker 1: Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women
Speaker 1: Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding
Speaker 1: partner Pungi. Have a Great Day.