Reading Toni Morrison with my law students

Several years ago, over lunch at Le’s at The Garage in Harvard Square, weeks before the end of the spring semester, I learned that one of my law students, an African-American woman in her mid-twenties, had never read a single novel by Toni Morrison.

Not the Bluest Eye?

Sula? (Which contains my favorite ending sentences to any novel I’ve ever read: “‘O Lord, Sula,’” she cried, ‘girl, girl, girlgirlgirl’”. It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”)

Song of Solomon? (My favorite Toni Morrison novel and one of my favorite novels.)

Beloved?

Jazz? (Which contains my favorite opening sentence to any novel I’ve ever read: “Sth, I know that woman”)

Not Beloved? Really?

I must have thought that by naming a few of Morrison’s novels, I would jog her memory, and that she would say that, actually, yes, she had read that novel, after all, and had only forgotten that she had read it. But this was not the case. She knew perfectly well who Toni Morrison was and what she had written. She had always intended to read something by Morrison but had never seemed to find the time to do so, and now she did know where to begin.

As for me, I was still stuck on thinking how could any Black American run the risk of being in the world without having ever basked in Toni Morrison’s bright, warming, clarifying, and fortifying vision of who we’ve been, and who we are, and who we are capable of being. And I was reminded of two sentences from Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Prize lecture: Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong?

So after listening to my student explain how she had managed not to read any of Toni Morrison’s novels, I said something to the effect of you cannot continue to go through life without having read any Morrison. I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t intervene. Hers is the most comprehensive, compelling, elegant, and edifying vision of what it means to be Black folk in America that has ever been conceived and/or executed in all of Black letters. Morrison sees us through our own eyes and she insists that we see our lives through our own eyes and no one else’s. So when we are finished with our lunch, we are going to march right down to Harvard Book Store to remedy this situation.

I have been thinking about this conversation from a few years ago as I prepare to read Toni Morrison’s Sula next month with student members of the University of Virginia School of Law’s Black Law Student Association (BLSA) next month. Last fall, over lunch with UVA BLSA’s about ways that I can support them this school year, I offered that I would be happy to read a book with them.

Pick a book, any book.

What do you suggest?

What about something by Toni Morrison?

I haven’t really read a lot of Toni Morrison, but I’d love to read some Morrison, and I’d bet membership would too. What do you suggest we read?

Sula. Let’s read Sula.

Yet another piece of evidence that Twain was right when he said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong?

Not only have I been thinking about the conversation I had with my now former student, and about my future conversation with my present students, I have also been thinking a lot about the ways that Toni Morrison’s literary vision has shaped and continues to shape my understanding of myself, the community that raised me, the country and the world I live in, and about, even more broadly, the resources—literary, musical, physical arts—that we keep ready at hand to sustain us through challenging times—if you are reading this, ask yourself, what sustains you—and these are decidedly challenging times. Or, as Toni Morrison puts it, sublimely:

It's a nice big fat philosophical question, about: how do you get through? Sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt. It's not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It's that, that makes it elegant. Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly, it may be horrible, but at the same time it's not a compelling idea. It's predictable. It needs a tuxedo, it needs a headline, it needs blood, it needs fingernails. It needs all that costume in order to get anybody's attention. But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually, and they certainly are spiritually. This is a more fascinating job. We are already born; we are going to die. So you have to do something interesting that you respect in between.

In the challenging days ahead, saturated as they will be with hourly headlines about the next Tragic-Comic-Absurd outrage, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to remember that good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding. I intend to keep, front of mind, as first and last priority, that survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually, and they certainly are spiritually, and that we are already born; we are going to die. So you have to do something interesting that you respect in between. And I intend to focus more of my attention on those who are behaving beautifully under completely impossible circumstances than the usual suspects like the talking heads whose lust for the next sensation has all but undermined our fourth estate, or the clowns and jokers (also known as the political elite of both parties) that they incessantly cover.

And as for the doing something interesting that I respect in between, that has been in large part, and for over a decade now, and will remain, working with and supporting my law students, helping them to stay connected to the people and communities whose sacrifices have paved the way for their personal success, encouraging them to remember the words to the stories that, in the words of my teacher and mentor and intellectual mother, Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles, will keep them Rooted Against the Wind. And to challenging my students to learn new stories, like Sula, Beloved, Bluest Eye, Tar Baby that will shed new and illuminating light on the stories they have already lived, the ones that have always required, if they are to be told meaningfully and truthfully, that we see ourselves, our lives and stories, through our own eyes first, last, and at all points in between.

Which is also to say that I can’t wait to read Toni Morrison’s Sula with my students next month.

As for my former student, after lunch, like I promised, we made our way to Harvard Book Store. I bought her a copy of the Bluest Eye. I bought her a copy of Sula. I almost bought her a copy of Song Of Solomon, except that I could hear Dr. Gayle’s voice saying to me something like, just like a man, now you are going to highlight the novel Morrison has written that centers the lives of Black men, you didn’t learn anything from my class on Images of Women in Literature, did you? So instead I shared Dr. Gayles’s voice in my head with my former student, if I buy you Song of Solomon, my mentor will say, it’s so just like a man to highlight this book of Morrison’s over all the others she’s written that centers the lives of Black women. Then I said, if you find your way to Song of Solomon, that will be up to you, but if you don’t read any other Morrison, please read Bluest Eye and Sula, and definitely Beloved.

When I ran into my then student later that year in the fall, after summer break, she told me, excitedly, almost breathlessly, that she had spent the summer reading most of Morrison’s novels.

But she didn’t have to tell me what Morrison’s vision had added to her life, because that part was already written all over her face.