What Is Lost if We Turn Toni Morrison Into a Saint?

– I should say that there are few people who deserve canonization more than Toni Morrison, you know? – Yes. – It’s one of, it’s one of those things where, you know, has there ever been, like, a Nobel laureate whose own reputation can feel so wobbly, right? – Yeah. You mean uncertain, given — – It’s so debated. – given the stature of the work, the eminence of the quality of the work. – 100 percent. Like, she’s still, in some way, feels like she needs defending in some way that I, I think we’ll talk about but no, I think right now 11 of her books have been reissued and they’ve been given these new introductions. And there’s just a whole lot of personal writing about — just in the way that we are. Like, what she meant, what she did for people, what she did to the language. But what always makes me a little bit nervous, right, is when somebody is canonized and sanctified and somehow becomes flattened in the process, you know? Becomes somewhat of an eminent figure. And we cannot work with the ideas, you know? And we specifically can’t work with the ideas that feel difficult hot-to-touch, complicated, that bedeviled even her. And so I think some of the questions that we’re still asking about witness, about repair, about when is violence important in a narrative, when is it cheap spectacle, right? What do we owe the dead? All of these things are just so alive and and I don’t know if there’s anybody who’s thought about them or felt them or created language to address them in the way that she has. So I just feel, like, not ready for her to be untouchable yet, you know? I still want to wrestle. I still want to disagree with her, you know, and I still want to, in many ways, understand what she’s done to my own thinking. And, you know, the fact that I can think at all I think is owed — I owe a lot to Toni Morrison. You know, I’m going to talk about her writing in ways that she’s taught me to think about writing that I didn’t know was possible. – Same here.